Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, July 25, 1993                   TAG: 9309060237
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: D2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ROADS AND SCHOOLS

That's worth keeping in mind the next time a rural legislator complains about Northern Virginia stealing ``our'' road money.

r= It's worth keeping in mind not because the school-money distribution is unfair to Northern Virginia. If anything, schools in places like Scott - a poor, rural county in farthest Southwest Virginia - should be getting f+imoreo help. That's where state school aid is most needed, to bolster revenues from a low local-tax base.

Rather, it's worth keeping in mind as a reminder that roads, no less than the schools, are - or at least should be - part of a comprehensive statewide system.

Even more than school money, much of which still comes from local property taxes, the source of road money is difficult to ascribe to any specific place: The state's Transportation Trust Fund comes entirely from state revenues, including a gas tax whose payers by definition are on the move. In other words, there's basically no such thing as ``our'' road money and ``their'' road money.

And like state school money, state transportation money should go where it's most needed.

For the foreseeable future, that happens to be the growing urban/suburban corrider in the eastern half of the state, and especially in Northern Virginia. That's where the people are; that's where the traffic is.

This is not to say the state should pour all its transportation money into Northern Virginia. Southwest Virginia and other regions have road-construction needs, too, particularly when linked to economic-development efforts.

But those who want to see every road to every farm get paved are doomed to disappointment: Rural Virginia no longer has sufficient political clout, and the expense would be impossible to justify.

Nor is this to say that the state should pour all its transportation money into roads. Remarkable as was Northern Virginia's population growth, 32 percent, between 1980 and 1990, even more remarkable was the growth there in the number of registered vehicles, 50 percent. Without a greater forcus on mass transit, the state will never be able to pour enough concrete to get ahead of the traffic jams.

On this score, it's encouraging that the Virginia Department of Transportation's proposed funding-formula change calls for increasing from 8.4 percent to 15.8 percent the portion of trust-fund money to go to mass transit. Even that, however, may be insufficient.

Children cannot choose where they're born and reared. That's one good reason for trying to ensure access to quality schools everywhere in Virginia.

Adults, however, do have such choices. If they wish to live in the quiet of rural Virginia, the cost may have to be unpaved roads. If they wish to live near big-city bustle, the price may have to be greater reliance on public transit and less on their own private cars.