Gov. Kaine Proposes a Sensible Cul-de-Sacre Bleu!

The Kaine administration recently rolled out new regulations that may change the face of the commonwealth. Future subdivisions, it says, must have cut-through roads that connect their interiors to the larger roads beyond; no longer will single-entrance access suffice.

That is, at least not without considerable cost. At present Virginia pays the freight for maintaining subdivision streets. That policy adds a couple of hundred new lane miles to the Transportation Department's maintenance inventory every year -- a factor that accounts in part for the diversion of construction money to maintenance needs. (By state law, maintenance takes precedence over new road-building.)

Henceforth, new subdivisions that do not provide arterial connectivity will not enjoy state-funded road main tenance. The new rules also require narrower streets and more sidewalks. And they constitute a full-frontal assault on one of suburbia's most cherished features: the cul-de-sac development.

For obvious reasons, millions of Americans like living in places where nobody except their friends and neighbors need to go. Cul-de-sacs offer safety and quiet, just as subdivisons inaccessible save by one or two main entrances do. As Mike Toalson, executive VP of the Home Builders Association of Virginia, told The Washington Post, "Crooks look for multiple exits." Developers wouldn't build so many cul-de-sac subdivisions if buyers weren't hungry for them.

YET THE cul-de-sac development presents headaches as well.

First, it contributes to congestion, in three ways: (1) at the main entrance, which is a bottleneck through which all subdivision residents must pass; (2) by virtue of the fact that residents have to drive in order to do something as simple as going to school or buying a gallon of milk; and (3) by virtue of the fact that other people have to drive around it. If there's an accident on the main road running next to a cul-de-sac subdivision, drivers can't cut through to find another road home; they're stuck. (Imagine how Richmond traffic might look if, say, the Fan District were one big subdivision, and nobody could drive between Boulevard, Belvidere, Monument, and Cary Streets to get somewhere else.)

Second, the cul-de-sac subdivision presents challenges to, e.g., emergency-vehicle response times: If a fire engine or ambulance can't cut through a subdivision, then it, too, must go around -- often at the cost of precious minutes.

Third, limited-access subdivisions drive up transportation costs by requiring the construction of more lane miles around them. If the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but a new 10,000-home residential community lies smack-dab in the middle of the straight line, then transportation planners have to create less direct, and therefore longer, paths around it. That is yet one more factor explaining why, in recent decades, the number of lane-miles driven in Virginia has grown three times as fast as population.

In economic terms, some of the indirect social costs of subdivisions may be externalized: They get paid by people who live elsewhere. Now that is not necessarily the case, because a house in a cul-de-sac might carry a higher price, which will reflect the market value of not having fire engines roaring down the street at 2 a.m. with sirens wailing.

STILL, IT IS true that Virginia's policy of maintaining subdivision roads amounts to a direct financial subsidy. People living in grid-layout neighborhoods (such as The Fan, or Westover Hills) pay part of the freight for people who live in subdivisions -- yet they cannot use the subdivision roads to get from A to B.

None of which makes subdivisions inherently bad. It doesn't make the people who live in them nasty or selfish. It simply means that the rapid growth of cul-de-sac subdivisions with limited access has imposed social costs that are not entirely reflected in the market price of the houses that compose them.

The Kaine administration's proposal seems to strike an eminently sensible balance. It asks residents of future subdivisions either to permit multiple points of access -- or, if they'd rather not, to shoulder the burden of paying for the roads that nobody else will be able to use. There's nothing wrong with wanting to live in a private community. But residents shouldn't expect the commonwealth to help pay for the upkeep.

My thoughts do not aim for your assent -- just place them alongside your own reflections for a while.

--Robert Nozick.

Contact A. Barton Hinkle at (804) 649-6627 or .