The Commonwealth Transportation Board approved a set of significant changes to how transportation projects are evaluated and how state funding is allocated under Virginia’s SMART SCALE program, a key pot of state support.

Since 2016, SMART SCALE has given out around $7 billion to help localities with roads, transit infrastructure, as well as bike and pedestrian improvements. The Board has tweaked the process in the past, but changes have mostly been minor. Transportation experts have generally praised the program as a balanced approach to funding decisions that doesn’t play favorites between different modes of transportation.

But following Monday’s vote, transit advocates in Northern Virginia say that may no longer be the case.

Ahead of the vote, they had raised concerns about the proposed changes, which they say disadvantage larger jurisdictions like Fairfax and favor highway improvements over standalone bike and pedestrian projects and transit.

State staff, including transportation secretary Shep Miller, said the changes are meant to prioritize funding for larger projects and align the program’s economic development priorities with measures used by the state economic development leaders. They also said they wanted to limit the number of projects submitted in order to reduce incomplete applications, which they say are burdensome on state staff.

The Board approved of the new economic development measure, and appeared to approve the new limits on applications — until one board member changed his vote at the end of the meeting. The Board also voted to redefine how the SMART SCALE process measures congestion, from current congestion levels to a projection for seven years in the future, which critics worry is overly speculative.

In a particular blow to Northern Virginia localities and transit advocates, the Board completely removed “land use” — a measure of the density of people and jobs close to a transportation project — as an independent factor in SMART SCALE scoring. Northern Virginia projects tended to score well on those measures because of the density of the region. State staff argued the measure weighed too heavily in the current scoring process.

Taken together, some Northern Virginia transit advocates say the approved changes could hurt the region’s attempts to create safer, more walkable urban environments instead of suburban sprawl and wider highways. Tying projects to the state’s economic development measures, for example, could have the effect of prioritizing new development — and potential sprawl — over supporting existing business corridors.

Regional representatives on the Board did win some concessions, including adding language to define corridor-wide improvement projects, including rail and bus rapid transit projects, as “high priority.”

“The overall impact of the changes is almost certain to lead to reduced funding for cleaner transportation projects while favoring larger highway projects and more speculative development,” said Trip Pollard, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “Some of the decisions did improve staff’s proposed changes. Getting rid of land use entirely, though, is a big step backward.”

Even Miller, who supported a staff recommendation to reduce the weighting of density, said he believed the Board went too far in removing land use entirely — possibly even contrary to the original intent of the legislature in setting up SMART SCALE to begin with.

“We’ve flown in the face of, my view, the law, we’ve flown in the face of the administration, we’ve flown in the face of the consultants, and the staff,” Miller said, following the vote. “I think it’s a bad decision.”

During the discussion, Miller outlined a vision for state transportation funding focused primarily on roads and traffic congestion, which he believed should continue to be a central goal of the program. He also voiced skepticism about the effectiveness of design updates and streetscape improvements — some of which have historically been funded through SMART SCALE — to increase driver and pedestrian safety.

“The deaths that are happening in Virginia are not tied to engineering, they’re tied to behavior,” Miller said. (Last year, the death toll on the state’s roads surpassed 1,000 for the first time.)

Transit advocates disagree, arguing that traffic calming measures, protected bike lanes, and other design elements can prevent fatalities. They also disagree that expanding highways leads to less traffic.

“Secretary Miller does not understand that we can’t ‘solve congestion’ (wider roads fill up again),” wrote Stewart Schwartz, the executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, a group that advocates for walkable urban communities, in a social media post. “We can however use mixed-use, walkable, transit-oriented communities and transit to reduce the need to drive and vehicle miles traveled.”

Some defended the Board’s changes, saying they were needed to rebalance the program towards bigger improvements, which sometimes include multiple transportation modes.

“Taken together, these changes will ensure that Smart Scale is funding larger, more beneficial, and more regionally significant projects across the Commonwealth,” said Jason Stanford, president of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance, in a press release. Stanford added that he did not support the full removal of land use from the process, though he agreed with state staff that the factor weighed too heavily in the previous version.

The Board’s vote came after a lengthy and at-times contentious meeting, which lasted for hours and was disrupted by two fire alarms. On multiple occasions, Board members expressed confusion or a desire to table discussions on certain issues until they could review further data. One member abstained from one vote on the basis of lacking adequate information on the details of the motion. But Miller dismissed those concerns.

“We can’t keep kicking this can down the road,” he said, noting that localities will begin the process of submitting new applications for SMART SCALE funding in the spring.

This story has been updated with comments from the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance, and to reflect the Board rejection of new application limits.