News and Views

The Washington Post : Does math make sense in picking transportation projects?

From The Washington Post

The Virginia and Maryland governments are pursuing the same theory about how to plan transportation improvements, but they’re heading toward very different outcomes.

The theory makes good sense: If you want to take politics out of planning, then evaluate projects on the same scale of public benefits and give them scores. Unless there are special circumstances, those that score highest should have first crack at financing.

 Less politics, more math.

That made sense to Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s administration and the Virginia General Assembly. The Commonwealth Transportation Board, Virginia’s top policy panel, is holding public meetings across the state to discuss the first results of project scoring.

In an interview after he attended the meeting for Northern Virginia, State Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne expressed his satisfaction. Layne said the public discussion was moving away from how much money individual jurisdictions were getting for transportation projects.

“We could never get here without the technical stuff we did,” he said. “Now the conversation is more about results and things Virginians can understand: Are we getting good things built?”

In Maryland, by contrast, the scoring idea made sense to the legislature and not to Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration. Hogan vetoed the bill. Then the General Assembly overrode the veto.

Read the full story from The Washington Post



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