Interesting tidbits from Philip Shucet

Former Transportation Commissioner Philip Shucet has been working on Hampton Roads transportation problems for more than 14 years, as a private engineering consultant and as the leader of the Virginia Department of Transportation.

On Monday we'll run a 10 questions feature with Shucet that focuses on local interstate problems, but here are some excepts from our conversation that didn't make the main article. 

Shucet is watching the special transportation session of the General Assembly hoping that something happens in Richmond next week. But drawing on his upbringing, Shucet thinks Gov. Tim Kaine should have done more consensus-building before lawmakers returned to the Capital.

Recalling his Italian roots, Shucet said a couple of his uncles were barbers."They spent more time preparing the edge on the razor than they did on shaving somebody's face," he said. "I think we might not have prepared enough for the special session. You have a group of people coming to town with more disagreements than agreements."

Shucet said he was extremely encouraged at the way local lawmakers worked across partisan lines earlier this year.

Hampton Roads Caucus Chairman John Cosgrove (R-Chesapeake) "did an outstanding job pulling them together in a way that I've never seen before," he said. "You don't find people working hard on trying to find a solution at the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel if they don't think there's a transportation problem."

But as the session approached something changed.

"The non-partisan unity eroded somewhat," Shucet said. "They've got to get that feeling and energy back." 

But ever the optimist, Shucet refuses to give up. Kaine and Senate Majority Leader Richard "Dick" Saslaw, D-Fairfax, are pushing lawmakers to patch the massive hole the Kaine administration forecasts in statewide maintenance funding and raise taxes to boost funding in Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia. But Shucet is more focused on the local issues.

"I hope that at a minimum out of this special session we can get our regional packages back," he said. "I'm not going to say where the revenue should come from, because I've tried to stay out of that."

Shucet has been saying for years that local roads and the clogged interstates around Washington are well beyond crisis. But he said lawmakers shouldn't try to distract the public by talking about restudying projects because of the uncertain future of the nation's transportation network.   

"We let ourselves get way behind. We're behind the curve," he said. "We need to get these projects built to get out of this hole, but going forward we should think differently."