Long, steep hill for Norfolk, Va., light rail

February 14, 2001 (The following commentary appeared in The Virginian-Pilot
 September 26, 2010.) The Tide's financial mismanagement will cost Norfolk's citizens millions of dollars more than originally planned. That's hardly news.

Hampton Roads Transit
officials announced in December that the light-rail project was $50 million
over budget and that they didn’t have the money to completely cover the gap.
The cost overrun was the second such shock in 12 months, and it led directly to
the replacement of HRT’s leadership last winter.

The disclosure that the
city is on the hook for $28 million – and that some of that will soon be due,
as The Pilot‘s Debbie Messina and Harry Minium reported last weekend – gives
opponents of a regional light-rail system fresh material. As ugly as that new
bill is – and it is huge – there is reason to believe that HRT is finally
functioning responsibly and that other South Hampton Roads cities can avoid the
pitfalls that have plagued Norfolk’s efforts to get The Tide rolling.

After HRT’s latest
overrun revelation, which ballooned the cost of the project to $338 million
from $232 million, the agency hired Phil Shucet, a well-respected
transportation executive, to take over The Tide’s construction.

Reasons for the price
jump were many. Officials low-balled the original estimate to secure federal
approval. Changes were demanded by the state and the feds. The city made late
alterations in where the rail runs, most notably around Norfolk State
University. And there were surprises under Norfolk streets and under the water.
But every bit of the increase can be directly ascribed to an HRT that didn’t
have the people or the experience to build a project of this magnitude and didn’t
realize its own shortcomings until it was too late.

Shucet’s hiring was an
effort to end further surprises and to repair a disastrously broken arrangement
between the city and the transit agency. It was also aimed at putting the wheel
in the hand of someone with experience both in managing big transportation
projects and at righting ones gone wrong.

There’s nothing Shucet
can do to erase past troubles, including the way light rail was organized at
the start. Under the original arrangement – negotiated years ago – Norfolk is
responsible for the finances of The Tide, not the construction. HRT is
responsible for the construction, not the finances. Two straight Decembers of
unexpected $50 million overruns is all the evidence necessary to show that
insufficient oversight was built into the deal. Norfolk’s taxpayers now face
the consequences.

Meanwhile, Norfolk’s
light-rail line runs only from Newtown Road to Sentara Norfolk General
Hospital. To reach its potential, The Tide will eventually have to go farther –
to the Navy base and to the Oceanfront. It will have to become part of a system
that encourages Hampton Roads residents to leave behind their cars as it
reorders development patterns. The political courage necessary for such an
expansion – especially in Virginia Beach – is imperiled with every new
revelation in Norfolk, with every unexpected bill.

It’s not just the
No-No-No crusaders, who argue alternately that light rail is a conspiracy to enrich
developers and a boondoggle that nobody will ride. Given the relentless
financial missteps, suspicion about light rail and about HRT has continued to
spread, and understandably so.

Shucet may have brought
coherence and transparency to a project not previously known for either, but
depending solely on him to make light rail work is not a permanent solution to
HRT’s problems. It also is not enough to assuage the concern that many Beach
residents feel. Something structural must change within HRT and in the
relationship it has with its constituent cities.

Dissolving those
relationships entirely would be hard, even for Virginia Beach. HRT is this
region’s designated agency to receive federal transportation funds. Reproducing
the administration of a transit agency would be duplicative and unnecessarily
expensive. Fortunately, Virginia Beach has the advantage of learning from HRT’s
dysfunctional relationship with Norfolk.

If Virginia Beach decides
to move forward with light rail – a prospect likely to become more attractive
in the coming years – it will know which checks and balances to demand in any
arrangement with the transit agency. It can bring in state officials, who were
otherwise occupied during The Tide’s approach. It can take advantage of an HRT
that has become a different organization and a better one.

Shucet’s experience
remaking the Virginia Department of Transportation earlier in the decade may
provide some confidence. He took over a bloated agency incapable of finishing
projects on time or on budget and managed to turn around several that had been
mired in government bureaucracy. Virginians who wanted to know where millions
of dollars were being spent had only to ask or go online.

Under Shucet, HRT has
committed to opening The Tide late next spring. It also has a $10-million
contingency fund. The agency doesn’t want to tap into that fund, but Norfolk
could surely use some help retiring its $28 million deficit.

If HRT opens the project on
time and decides to use that $10 million to relieve some pressure on the city’s
taxpayers, those moves should go a long way toward showing the region that The
Tide is back on track, and that HRT is finally capable of steering it.