Hybrid AWD

http://www.dailypress.com/news/traff...,3974861.story

A contractor bid Thursday to double the size of the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, adding four lanes to the region's most notorious chokepoint.

The Virginia Department of Transportation received the proposal late Thursday, just hours before the end of a deadline for the roads agency to accept unsolicited bids on expanding the oft-clogged commuter link between the Peninsula and south Hampton Roads.

"Now we will find out for the very first time what a project would cost and what it would look like," said Del. G. Glenn Oder, R-Newport News, who carried the legislation telling the state to accept unsolicited proposals. "This is a big deal. It's going to be controversial, but it's going to be a fascinating public discussion."

State staffers and engineers are reviewing and deciding whether to formally accept the proposal, which promises to fuel regional tensions over how to improve Hampton Roads' aging and overworked transportation network.

The unsolicited proposal was submitted by Hampton Roads Crossings, a consortium of international construction companies and infrastructure developers that include: Skanska Infrastructure Development, Kiewit Infrastructure Company, Skanska USA Civil, Weeks Marine and Parson Brinckeroff.

According to preliminary information submitted to Virginia Department of Transportation doubling the capacity of the tunnel would cost between $3.5 and $4 billion, require a toll of between $4 and $6 and construction would take place between 2014 and 2018.

VDOT spokesman Jeff Caldwell said it typically takes a number of weeks to review the particulars of a complex proposal like the one that slipped under the recent deadline. Caldwell said the numbers are flexible, including toll rates, which could drop if the state puts in more money for the project.

"It's like a mortgage," Caldwell said. "The more you put in upfront the less you have to pay going forward."

Lawmakers have haggled for years over how to upgrade the state's transportation grid by pumping new money into the system, but anti-tax sentiment, mistrust of VDOT and concerns over the right ways to break up gridlock have stalled progress.

At the regional level, local transportation planners balked at adding the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel to the list of needed projects since the 1990s, opting instead to focus on a third crossing, a project that would stem from the base of the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel before cutting east into Norfolk.

In recent years, Peninsula leaders have turned their focus to the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel because it is the most obvious commuter headache. But South Hampton Roads leaders, especially Norfolk Major Paul Fraim, have railed against expanding the tunnel because a wider Interstate-64 would likely cut into neighborhoods in Ocean View that already closely border the roadway.

In past few weeks, regional fissures over the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel flared when Fraim blasted VDOT for pushing ahead with a $5 million study and environmental review of the tunnel without any input from regional transportation planners.

Local politics could potentially derail an expansion of the HRBT, because in order to get any federal funding the project would have to be approved by the local metropolitan planning organization and added to the region's long-range plan. The HRBT currently isn't on the 2034 plan.

Dwight Farmer, the executive director of the Metropolitan Planning Organization, said that leaders are currently working to reprioritize the list of projects and expect to update the long range plan in the next 10 to 12 months.

The unsolicited proposal was triggered by a General Assembly bill sponsored by Del. G. Glenn Oder, a Newport News Republican who has taken a lead role on transportation issues in the past few years. Oder's bill — HB 402 — directed VDOT to prepare for an unsolicited proposal with a deadline of Sept 30.

Under the bill, which flew through the General Assembly by a wide margin, the state transportation agency now has to accept other bids for the next three months, and decide by next May whether the proposal merit further consideration.

The contractor would build the new four-lanes as public-private partnership with the state, meaning that the project is expected to include tolls on the crossing, which hasn't had levies since the 1970s. The amount of the tolls depends on the price tag for the project and on how much transportation money the state is willing to put into the deal.

83Stang5.0

Fuck that, I'll take 664 or the JRB. They had to have built the midtown for something?

Fobby

Ok even though it is going to be 4 lanes wouldn't the toll lanes still cause major backups?

Hijacker

That's an absurd toll for such a small strip of road. I spend that much crossing the West Virginia Turnkpike.

blah

The tolls aren't the problem for me; the question is when would the tolls would be lifted. (Most likely never.)

2 more things:
-Didn't we just find out DMV was hoarding a billion dollars the other day? Use that since it was just going to be laundered away to some asshole's pocket anyways.
-I think an outside partnership should build it and collect the tolls until they recoup their money. It'll be built quicker (no way it should take 5 years to do), cheaper (way less than $4 billion), be done right the first time (Hello I-64 HOV lanes by the Hampton Coliseum having to be redone 3x by the same group while getting paid 3x) and the local/state governments will be real quick the snatch the tolls away from them after a certain number of months. Basically, I think VDOT is managed by a bunch of fucking idiots at all levels, whom don't know how to do their jobs.

Fobby

Blah...I know about EZ-pass...but I know not everyone is going to have one. I meant like the people who only have cash monies.

Cobra4B

They need to repave everything around here...

blah

Tell 'em to get with the times.

Or it's gonna have to be like how it is on Powhite Parkway in Richmond. Separate lanes with a rolling toll and then a bank of regular tolls with people in there.

Reloaded

I don't oppose tolls for NEW construction until something is paid off, only adding them to roads that have already been paid for.

I think most people oppose giving VDOT any money because they have historically done a poor job of managing it.

CBR600F4

Ya, um........................getting EZ Pass usable there will be enough of a headache itself. Let's see; heading north it's two lanes once you pass 564, tell me where they're gonna make some EZ Pass only lanes?

So ya; having a toll is gonna make it worse.


I've got a brilliant idea; use the fucking cameras to fine motherfuckers who like to hit the brakes at the start of the tunnel; seeing as how THAT's why the backups start in the first place. If everyone would just do the damn speed limit there wouldn't be a problem.