Philip Shucet: Transportation Straight-Talk

Ten Action Steps to Jump Start Transportation

The Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance held it's final Speaker's Series event of the year on December 17th 2009, featuring former VDOT Commissioner Philip Shucet. The event marked the culmination of a three-part series beginning with Secretary of Transportation Pierce Homer in June followed by the Washington Post's Dr. Gridlock in October.

A crowd of 80 attendees gathered at the Waterford at Fair Oaks to here Mr. Shucet's remarks, where he said it is time to stop arguing and to start doing things to improve transportation “right now.”

Mr. Shucet‘s list of achievable action steps includes:

Move $250 million from maintenance back to construction each of the next four years.
Establish quickly a shortlist of projects that provide additional capacity in the most congested areas that can quickly move to construction.
Determine quickly which projects may be of interest to the private sector as possible public-private partnerships.
Use the design-build method of project delivery for all priority projects (reduces time, cost and shifts risk of preliminary engineering to contractor).
Put members of the Virginia General Assembly on every Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) in Virginia.
Slash the permitting time for projects that are going to move forward.
Modernize Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) duties by allowing them to truly contribute to long-range planning.
Perform quickly any audit of VDOT. “If any audit is to happen, do it quickly.”
Keep local projects under local control.
Find items in the Governor-Elect’s transportation plan to support and support them fervently.

To read Mr. Shucet’s entire remarks, click here.

To view images from the event, click here.

“When it comes to transportation
I’m afraid that we’ve only widened the gap
between Democrats and Republicans.
That’s to no one’s advantage.”

-Philip A. Shucet
December 17, 2009