Seventy-four percent of the respondents in Northern Virginia, meanwhile, said they want to live in suburbs with a low density of population and to use a car rather than mass transit to get to work, school and shopping. AAA officials apparently think it can be achieved. Our transportation policies should be consistent with the way people choose to live, Lon Anderson, director of public and government relations for AAA Mid-Atlantic, said in a press release. Maybe not, but their constituents apparently are harboring unrealistic and unaffordable expectations. People who choose to work in Northern Virginia and commute from distant suburbs in Stafford and Spotsylvania are having their lifestyle subsidized by taxpayers in general.
Roads cost money.
Many of those same commuters enroll their children in school systems funded in large part by local governments struggling to provide services to people who reside in the low-density subdivisions proliferating on the outer edge of the Washington metropolitan area. In a representative form of government, elected officials naturally try to give constituents what they want. There are times, however, when elected officials must become leaders. Virginia has reached a crisis point that requires new thinking. No change is in sight, unfortunately.