Most of the bills we’ve been watching or working on have made it as far as they will before crossover. The General Assembly is often likened to drinking from a firehose, and this year has certainly been no exception.

The bills

Summary:

  • 2-abreast reversion passes Senate – Stop Sign targeting stricken, was just a maneuver
  • Vulnerable Road User improved language passes both houses
  • NVTA bike/ped funding bill replaced with study and referred to finance committee
  • New House committees kill:
    • Dedicating percentage of Surplus to Transportation Safety
    • Improvements to 15mph law (2021) and Auto Speed Enforcement
    • Vision Zero Resolution
  • Sunday Hunting passes Senate but fails in House subcommittee

The anti-bike bills: 2-Abreast and Increased Stop Sign Penalty: Tommy Norment’s bill to increase fines for bicyclists failing to stop at stop signs was stricken at the request of the patron in the Senate Transportation committee. Norment never intended for this bill to become law, but he did want to go on record with a rant about bicyclists who fail to stop at stop signs, particularly on the Capital Trail near his house in James City County. Apparently someone once shot him the bird, which he demonstrated to successful comic effect. After his ambling, he said he felt much better and his bill was over.

Tommy is not incompetent. He knew quite well that his theatrics would set up his fellow anti-cyclist senator, Richard Stuart, for success in his effort to peel back part of the Bicyclist Safety Act we got through last year. You may remember Stuart and Norment, joined by Cosgrove, taking up lots of air on the senate floor describing all the “bad” things about that bill.

As Stuart took to the lectern, he gave an anecdote of a pre-dawn scene in which a driver of a dually truck pulling a horse trailer who came around a bend upon two cyclists riding two abreast “at 5mph” as an oncoming car approached. The driver apparently had no choice but to put his truck and trailer in a ditch to avoid a crash with the cyclists or oncoming car, and the horse died as a result. The patron plainly advocated for the driver to be able to “thread the needle” between the cyclists and the oncoming car, and that the cyclists riding single file would have allowed that and that the bills struck a “good balance”.

The Senate Transportation committee was persuaded and voted to support the bill 11-5 based on the power of Stuart’s anecdote. Despite some remarks from Surovell about needing to give it more time to see what the safety impacts of the 2-abreast + Changing Lanes to Pass will be. They did not seem to be compelled by the directive to drivers to maintain control of their vehicles at all times nor that “threading the needle” is in the scenario described by the patron could have easily killed all parties involved, even the horse.

The Senate favored the bill with a bit of a surprising majority, with an amendment by Surovell to disqualify riding 2-abreast as grounds for contributory negligence (which would allow bicyclists in a crash to seek damages regardless of whether riding side-by-side). Since Surovell is the leading bike senator, and because he had to vote in favor of the bill in order to get his amendment approved by the patron, most of the supporters of last year’s Bicyclist Safety Act voted with him and for the bill – notably even Joe Morrissey who carried the Senate version of the BSA last year. This practice is among Jefferson’s parliamentary rules and makes the 34-5* vote a bit less deflating, if not necessarily immediately apparent.

* Senator Hashmi changed her vote.

Other bills: House Transportation subcommittees expressed no interest in allowing localities to lower their speed limits except for with VDOT approval nor for dedicating either funding or a commitment to reducing transportation fatalities. Chair of Subcommittee on Transportation Infrastructure and Policy in one sentence will talk about what it’s like to come from local government and the challenges of getting improvements on local roads, and in another about how VDOT needs to be in control of ensuring that we are moving cars. In the Public Policy subcommittee Chaired by Nick Freitas, modest expansions to where speeding cameras are allowed from patrons of both parties, either in Hampton Roads tunnels or on dangerous highways where people who have had family members killed, fell quite flat. In swift movements, bills designed to save lives were squashed.

Senator Surovell’s bill to dedicate funding to biking and walking got a lot of pushback from the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority because of how it aimed to dedicate existing funds instead of finding new money for those projects. It took a few different forms before passing the Local Government committee as a study bill seeking to get one big price tag for biking and walking projects in Northern Virginia. Next it goes to Finance where I imagine the committee will determine there are existing funds for this kind of planning, and then it will go to the Senate floor.

The Senate passed the wide expansion of Sunday hunting on public lands, but the House killed a lesser version in subcommittee in a sign that the issue could die again this year after crossover.

Next Steps

Crossover is February 15 – There are a few bills we are watching that haven’t concluded their originating house process; check them at our bill watcher and let us know if we’ve missed any important ones. In less than two weeks, all the bills will go through the same process in the other house.

Trails

Virginia Trails Alliance and Virginia Bicycling Federation have been meeting with members of the appropriations committees and sharing information about the importance of investing in Virginia Trails. See our letter here, and thanks to 3,500 of you for signing on!

As a part of this effort, we presented this letter to Senator Emmett Hanger and Delegate Bulova at a highly attended meeting of the Virginia Outdoor Recreation Caucus this week, and they are appreciative of the advocacy to support the budget. Your senator serves on Finance and Appropriations or delegate serves on Appropriations, listed below, be sure to send them a note of your support.

House Appropriations:

Knight (Chair), Austin (Vice Chair), Morefield, Fariss, Davis, Bloxom, Brewer, Marshall, Hodges, Coyner, Wyatt, Wampler, Torian, Sickles, Plum, Bulova, Carr, McQuinn, Krizek, Hayes, Reid, Rasoul

Senate Finance and Appropriations:

Howell (Chair), Saslaw, Norment, Hanger, Lucas, Newman, Ruff, Vogel, Barker, Edwards, Deeds, Locke, Petersen, Marsden, Ebbin, McClellan

Each house is currently working on its own version of the budget, and we are especially expecting things to be cut out of the House version in order to fund the tax cuts that the new governor and House leadership have promised. We will see those budgets in a couple of weeks, and then they will go to conference to be negotiated between the two houses in early March.

Thanks to everyone for supporting this important work. Our legislative calls each Sunday have been dynamic and well-attended, and we are working well with what we’ve got. Let’s keep up the momentum for funding our trails at historic levels!

Brantley