Decisiveness, not delay is needed on Va. Beach’s light rail

The Virginian-Pilot
© July 22, 2009

Last week, the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce asked the Virginia Beach City Council to make a decision on light rail without resorting to a referendum.

The request is an acknowledgment by the chamber that sometimes leaders must lead on difficult issues. But it does little to calm the treacherous political waters in Virginia Beach.

The city and its people have long prided themselves on having the best schools, services and employees they can afford. The current recession has made all of that harder, however, and has already forced difficult budget choices.

Meantime, a vocal anti-tax minority is making a push to kill rail in Virginia Beach before it is born. Opponents are insisting on a referendum because they think they stand a better chance of defeating light rail at the ballot box than at City Hall.

The argument for a vote starts and ends with the fact that 56 percent rejected light rail in an advisory referendum in 1999.

The world was a different place then; traffic was lighter, and the state was still in the business of building roads. Most significantly, Norfolk didn’t have a light rail system that could be linked to Virginia Beach.

The 1999 vote remains the last clear count of public sentiment on the subject. But that sentiment should be only one factor in any decision like this.

Referendums have their use. There is often wisdom in crowds. Sometimes, elected officials make such horrendous decisions that they must be undone by popular vote.

Sometimes, though, people are wrong, or shortsighted, or back a bad solution. Sometimes, leaders must lead. Just ask Norfolk, where light rail, the MacArthur Center and Harbor Park were all built without a referendum.

It goes without saying that Virginia Beach isn’t Norfolk. But, as a mature city, Virginia Beach is beginning to face some of the same problems with transportation and redevelopment.

Plans to run rail so near to Virginia Beach Boulevard have the potential to change Virginia Beach’s commercial strips and nearby neighborhoods, already part of revitalization plans. Light rail could move people around the Beach – and to and from local military bases – without requiring new roads that have no chance of being built.

But light rail also will be massively expensive. Whether the money comes from local taxpayers or Richmond or Washington, the cost will be measured in hundreds of millions of dollars.

As Hampton Roads Transit works on a feasibility study for light rail, the Beach’s leaders will have to work to keep light rail from becoming mired in the city’s politics.

Any referendum is unlikely before 2010, when the study is likely to be ready and when light rail will start running in Norfolk.

In the meantime, Virginia Beach is negotiating to buy a right of way between Newtown Road (where Norfolk’s light rail line will end) and the Oceanfront. The city is also trying to buy the old Circuit City at Independence Boulevard along the potential rail line.

The folks who oppose light rail are trying to slow the land deals in hopes of preventing momentum from building for the project. Regardless of whether light rail is eventually built in Virginia Beach, both the right of way and the Circuit City property are too critical to the city’s future to be left in somebody else’s hands.

Likewise, the decision about whether Virginia Beach should build light rail is a decision too important to be gamed by politicians – whether they’re elected ones or self-appointed guardians of the public’s purse.