For those of you that know me, you're probably aware that I strongly supported Charlie Hall against Linda Q. Smyth in the 2007 Providence District Supervisors' race. Unfortunately, Hall - the smart growth, transit-oriented-development candidate, lost to Smyth, who many smart growth and environmentalist voters saw as more beholden to developers and less transit-friendy (particularly, but not exclusively, on the Tysons Tunnel issue). Two years later, credit needs to go where credit is due. Check this out.The decision this week to abandon plans to widen Interstate 66 inside the Capitol Beltway inflamed tensions between transit-friendly inner jurisdictions and auto-dependent outer counties and jeopardized $30 million in federal funds.
The vote by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Government's Transportation Planning Board caught many by surprise. The $75 million project was approved 23 to 4 in May 2007. The turnabout reflected perceived foot-dragging by the Virginia Department of Transportation on a study of all transportation alternatives in the I-66 corridor, board members and staff said.
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...the swing votes during Wednesday's meeting turned out to be Fairfax County's. Both of Fairfax's representatives on the panel, county supervisors Catherine M. Hudgins (D-Hunter Mill) and Linda Q. Smyth (D-Providence), voted against the project and for Zimmerman's amendment. If they had switched votes, the project would have proceeded.
What's particularly interesting about the votes by Smyth and Hudgins is that I-66 expansion has often been pitted as an "inner suburb" (e.g., Arlington) vs. "outer suburb" (or even, horror of horrors, "exurb") issue. In this case, however, the "outer suburb" people joined the closer-in folks in voting against widening I-66. So, despite our past differences, today I want to say THANK YOU to Linda Q. Smyth (and also to Cathy Hudgins) for voting "no" on this ill-advised idea.
At this point, let me clarify something as strongly as I possibly can. This is NOT a "NIMBY" ("not in my backyard") issue for me at all. To the contrary, I oppose expansion of roads and highways (as opposed to maintenance of existing infrastructure) pretty much everywhere, including the "inter-county connector" in Maryland for example. My belief is that we need to rapidly get ourselves off of our "oil addiction" for environmental, national security, and economic reasons, and we are NOT going to do this by continuing to explicitly and implicitly subsidize sprawl and automobile travel. Instead, what I want to see is investment in high-quality transit - Metro, trolley, bullet trains, high-density development, etc. I want to see us revitalize our cities (and inner suburbs) and stop pouring money into an environmentally and economically unsustainable sprawl model that pretty much anyone who knows anything believes is the wrong way to go. It is in THAT context that my opposition to this relatively minor project in the grand scheme of things, I-66 expansion by one outbound lane inside the Beltway, needs to be placed. And it is in THAT context that my "thank you" to Linda Q. Smyth (and Cathy Hudgins) should be viewed.
