News and Views

The Richmond Times-Dispatch : I-81 report reignites a regional debate on transportation funding

The Richmond Times-Dispatch

A $2.1 billion highway project vital to the economy of western Virginia is reigniting a long-smoldering regional debate on how to pay for major transportation improvements, including those in the Richmond region.

The Commonwealth Transportation Board is expected to act Wednesday on submitting a detailed report to the General Assembly on how to make travel safer and smoother on Interstate 81, which extends 325 miles through sometimes steep mountainous terrain and carries more interstate truck traffic than any other major highway in Virginia.

But the two options state transportation officials propose — regional taxes or tolls — already have raised political concerns about equitable treatment of other regions of the state. Those regions are either already paying a steep price for transportation improvements or, like the Richmond metropolitan area, still looking for a way to pay for important transportation projects that can’t be financed with limited statewide funds.

In a board workshop on Tuesday, the debate was sparked by a proposal to allow drivers of light vehicles to purchase a $30 annual pass that would allow them to bypass a potential new tolling system on I-81 that would set rates based on time of day. That didn’t sit well with members from Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, where motorists already pay more at the toll lanes, as well as at the gas pump and cash register, for improvements to their congested transportation networks.

“I get concerned that we treat different regions differently,” said W. Sheppard Miller III, an at-large representative from Norfolk who estimated that commuters in his region pay $1,100 a year to travel to and from their jobs.

Miller placed the blame for what he called a “Balkanized” system on “the refusal of the General Assembly, historically, to provide the funds to do the work, so we’re doing it on our own.”

Richmond region

For the Richmond region, the options are limited because of a political decision not to join Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads in paying higher motor fuels and sales taxes under a sweeping state transportation funding package that has lost some of its value since its adoption in 2013.

“The impact of those resources is actually diminishing,” Secretary of Transportation Shannon Valentine told the board. “Where we are today is not where we expected to be.”

Richmond District representative Carlos M. Brown, who also serves on the Richmond Metropolitan Transportation Authority, advocates a regional solution to highway and mass transit needs in an area featured in a recent report on transportation challenges in a super-region from Richmond to Washington and Baltimore.

“I’m a big fan of regional authorities,” said Brown, senior vice president and general counsel at Dominion Energy.

Yet, the RMTA was not mentioned in the “Blueprint for Regional Mobility” released more than a week ago by the Greater Washington Partnership, which highlighted the need for expanded public bus and rail service in the Richmond metropolitan area.

That’s not a reflection on the regional authority, Brown said. “I think it’s more indicative of the continuing discomfort for the metropolitan Richmond region to talk about regionalism in the broad context.”

Urgency on I-81
 
The regional debate doesn’t change the hard facts on I-81, which state transportation officials say needs urgent improvements because of a high rate of traffic crashes, many of them deadly, and resulting long delays on a critical commercial artery that touches three-dozen local jurisdictions in the western half of the state.

“It serves as the backbone of the economy for western Virginia,” Deputy Secretary of Transportation Nick Donohue told the board in a detailed presentation of challenges and potential solutions for I-81.

The reason for different approaches to transportation challenges in different parts of the state is “the roads are different,” Donohue said. “The types of improvements required are different and that may require a different solution.”

For example, high-occupancy toll lanes are not an option on I-81, as they are in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, because the interstate doesn’t pass through a densely congested urban area.

But I-81 carries almost 12 million trucks a year, more than half of them from outside of Virginia, and accounts for 42 percent of interstate truck traffic in the state.

Most concerning, I-81 averages more than 45 crashes a year that require at least four hours for crews to clear and has recorded more than 11,000 crashes in the last five years.

The “unreliability of I-81” has become a pervasive concern in the Salem District, one of three highway districts the interstate crosses, said Raymond D. Smoot Jr., a Blacksburg resident who represents the district on the board.

“There is a plea from many different groups — civic groups, economic groups — that something be done to address it,” Smoot said.

The new report, produced at the direction of the General Assembly earlier this year, proposes 63 projects across the three districts at a total cost of almost $2 billion. It also proposes $43 million in improvements to operating systems — from expanded traffic cameras and message board to enhanced safety patrols and improvements on connected road networks — and $6 million for additional maintenance needs.

Together, Donohue said, the proposed improvements would reduce delays by more than 6 million “vehicle hours” a year and result in an average of 450 fewer crashes a year, including the 29 percent that result in human injury.

The state could pay for the improvements primarily with bonds, which would be paid by either new gas and sales tax revenues that would raise $165 million a year, or variable, time-of-day tolling that would produce $145 million a year in new revenue.

“We’re not saying, ‘Do both at the same time,’ ” Donohue explained.

The report would defer the choice to the General Assembly, which will convene next month for a 45-day legislative session during an election year for all 140 members.

“Ultimately, the General Assembly will decide which of the options it will pursue,” Brown said.

Read the full article and more in The Richmond Times-Dispatch.
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