Bacon's Rebellion

James A. Bacon


 
 

Go for it!

The Third Crossing

 

 

A third bridge-tunnel in Hampton Roads is the most important transportation project in Virginia. Tolls may make it financially feasible.


So, you’re driving down Interstate 64 to Norfolk. It’s the middle of the day – you’ve planned it that way to avoid rush hour traffic and avoid getting trapped in the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel. Near downtown Newport News, you hit a couple miles of congestion where the Interstate narrows from three lanes to two. Finally breaking free, you dash a mile down the highway – and then the tunnel strikes.

 

You’re creeping along, stuck in stop-and-go traffic for a half hour. Eventually, you slide into the concrete tube and slip beneath the waves, expecting to find a wreck, a broken-down car, a traffic cone that had fallen off a truck – anything to explain the delay. But there’s nothing. There’s no stinkin’ reason for the slowdown. It just happened.

 

But nothing “just happens.” The Bridge-Tunnel, designed to handle 78,000 cars a day when it opened in 1957, is operating way over capacity. Off-season, traffic routinely reaches 90,000 vehicles per day. During the summer tourist season, it exceeds 100,000. Delays lasting 15 minutes or more number around 300 to 400 annually, says Dwight Farmer, deputy executive director, transportation, for the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission. Within 10 years, he projects, there will be 21 such incidents per day. Says Farmer: “It may be perpetually clogged.”

 

The Monitor-Merrimac tunnel crossing the James River between Newport News and Suffolk won’t provide much relief. Completed in 1992, this second crossing reaches 60,000 vehicles per day in the summer, approaching design capacity of 78,000. In three to five years, says Farmer, it too will start getting congested.

 

Welcome to Hampton Roads’ traffic nightmare, a slow motion descent into the abyss of congestion, frustration and economic stagnation. Like every metropolitan area, the Hampton Roads MSA relies upon interstates to move its commuters. But I-64 is more than a commuter route for the million people living south of the river: It’s a vital economic link to the rest of the country, the bridge that brings tourists to Virginia Beach and container-bearing trucks to the port. It's the sole Interstate connection for companies doing business with other population centers. It's the knot binding what once had been separate metro areas, Norfolk-Virginia Beach and Hampton-

Newport News.

 

For Hampton Roads, geography is destiny. The confluence of the James River and Chesapeake Bay create the greatest natural harbor on the East Coast, supporting one of the great ports of the United States. But the same body of water throws a barrier between the populous regions on both sides.

 

If the Hampton Roads economy is to continue to grow, a third crossing over the “roads” is desperately needed. But the only project on the books – a bridge-tunnel linking Norfolk and Newport News – would cost $4.3 billion. In a referendum last November, voters spiked a proposal to raise the regional sales tax by a penny to finance construction of the third crossing, as well as a number of other congestion-mitigation projects around the MSA. Stunned by the defeat, community leaders have yet to devise an alternative.

 

But devise it they must. And other Virginians should be willing to lend a hand. Of all the transportation projects on the Virginia Department of Transportation books, the Third Crossing is the only one that is economically vital to the entire state. Every manufacturing plant and every distribution facility that ships product in and out of Virginia’s ports has a vested interest in the third crossing. Every jurisdiction, from Winchester to Martinsville, whose vitality depends upon keeping its factories humming and warehouses stocked has a stake in seeing the third Bridge-Tunnel built.

 

Virginia, not just Hampton Roads, must find a way to make the project happen.

 

On paper, the Third Crossing will be the most visually spectacular man-made structure in the Commonwealth. Starting at the port terminal in Norfolk, the interstate-quality expressway would swoop for miles over water, past the dredge-filled polder known as Craney Island, then swing north toward Newport News, paralleling the Monitor Merrimac bridge-tunnel. The Crossing would link up with the Monitor Merrimac in a cloverleaf elevated by trestles over the water.

 

Shipments through the facilities in Norfolk, Portsmouth and Newport News are increasing this year at a rate approaching 20 percent. The Third Crossing is a vital to maintain the long-term competitiveness of the Virginia ports. With the addition of Craney Island and the Maersk facility to the south, Virginia has a shot at overtaking New York as the No. 1 port on the East Coast. “We’ve got the deep water, the biggest, fastest cranes, and great rail infrastructure,” says J. Robert Bray, executive director. The VPA plans to invest $3 billion over the next 15 years.

 

The expansion of Virginia’s ports represents a rare economic opportunity. When marketing its port facilities to shippers around the globe, the port authority aggressively sells Virginia locations for manufacturing and distribution centers. So successful has the VPA been in recent years that roughly a third of its cargo either originates in, or goes to, Virginia locations – roughly double the proportion a decade ago.

 

In just the past five months, Virginia has snagged five new distribution centers totaling more than $100 million in investment. They include:  

  • Wal-Mart, Rockingham County, $55 million

  • Home Depot, Frederick County, $25 million, 125 jobs

  • Hudd Distribution, Chesapeake, $14 million, 260 jobs

  • Ford, Frederick County, $13.5 million distribution center employing 95

  • Evergreen Enterprises, Richmond, $5 million

And those come on top of blockbuster projects like Target’s distribution facility in Suffolk last year.

 

The bottleneck is Interstate 64. Five thousand trucks a week haul containers out of the Norfolk terminal. To avoid the congestion and uncertainty associated with the Hampton Roads Bridge-

Tunnel, many of them drive south down Hampton Boulevard, hop over to Portsmouth, then cut back up to the Monitor Merrimac – overloading city streets and adding as much as an hour to their trip. According to a survey of local trucking companies, the delay adds $35 or more to the delivery cost.

 

The Maersk facility will add another 1,000 trucks per week. Craney Island will put yet another 1,000 trucks on the road initially, then build up to 10,000 by 2030. Both facilities would enjoy far more convenient access to the Monitor Merrimac than the Norfolk facility. But that benefit lasts only as until the Monitor Merrimac starts experiencing delays. Then, truckers may be forced to detour as far west as Suffolk and U.S. 460.

Ironically, cargo shipments to distant Midwest markets won’t be affected by the bridge-tunnel bottlenecks – those containers travel by train. Virginia manufacturers and distribution centers, supplied by trucks, have the most to lose from traffic delays.

 

The challenge facing Virginia transportation planners is how to fund the $4.3 billion Third Crossing without raising taxes. That won't be easy: The entire Hampton Roads region can count on receiving only $5 billion in state road-building funds over the next 20 years, and $3 billion of that sum is already spoken for. That leaves only $2 billion for all other projects.

 

Tolls aren’t practical either, contends Farmer with the planning district commission. The commission has analyzed the toll option and concluded that the average user would wind up paying $3 for a one-way trip, while top users would pay $9. “If you’re a long-haul trucker and you go from one end [of the bridge-tunnel] to the other, you’d pay $9,” he says.

 

Bray with the Port Authority suggests that the Department of Defense might help defray the cost of connecting Norfolk and Craney Island on the grounds that it would speed up “load out” times for supply and troop ships heading overseas. The Navy Base has such limited capacity that load out for a major military campaign can take months. Employing the port facilities in Craney Island might speed up the process. But Farmer is none too optimistic: “I don’t think [DOD] will spend their money on roads while there’s homeland security and wars in the Middle East” to worry about.

 

No single revenue source will work. But a combination of revenue sources might. For starters, VDOT should strip out frills such as $600 million light rail component to the project. VDOT could contribute $1 billion from the funds earmarked for Hampton Roads, and maybe Virginia’s congressional delegation could squeeze $100 million to $200 million out of the Pentagon. Given the statewide benefit to the Third Crossing, perhaps the General Assembly could justify kicking in an extra $300 million or so financed through general obligation bonds.

 

Recasting the project along those lines would cut by half the amount, to about $2 billion, required to be financed through tolls. The tariff should be structured so that trucks pay significantly more than other motorists. By saving time and boosting productivity, a Third Crossing would generate savings that drop straight to the bottom line. If a truck traveling the full length of the bridge-tunnel saves $25 to $30, it’s perfectly reasonable to demand payment equal to half that amount -- as much as $15 per trip. That would take a significant load off of ordinary drivers.

 

Another possibility would be to charge tolls during periods of peak congestion – not just on the Third Crossing, but all three bridge-tunnels. Motorists driving in off hours might traverse for free. Those crossing in rush hour might pay $5 or more. Ideally, a steep price would induce people to reschedule their work hours, change residences to avoid crossing the river, or otherwise modify their commuting behavior.

 

There’s no perfect solution. We can expect a lot of whining and special pleading in opposition to any financing solution. We live, after all, in a society in which everyone wants someone else to pay for the public good. But the Third Crossing is truly a crucial transportation project, and Hampton Roads community leaders cannot allow last November’s referendum to scuttle the project. But with some imagination and creativity, someone should be able to devise a financing solution the public can live with.

 

-- May 26, 2003

 

Bring Home the Bacon

Help   About search

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fire back!

 

You can berate Bacon at jabacon@

baconsrebellion.com

 

Or read his profile here.

 

 

 

Hey, Bacon, You Dissed the Sales Tax Proposal Last Year -- How Can You Support the Third Crossing Now?

 

For the record, I believe Hampton Roads voters were right to have rejected the transportation funding mechanism proposed last year. Sales taxes are the wrong way to finance transportation improve-

ments. Raising the funds through a higher gasoline tax would have been a better idea: Gas taxes serve as a rough user fee, affirming the principle that those who benefit from transportation projects should be the ones who pay for them.

 

Even then, the referendum was trying to take on too much. The grab-bag of traffic-mitigation projects covered in the referendum did not address the underlying cause of most traffic congestion in the region: a scattered, low-density pattern of development that forces people to drive more. The tax also would have committed the region to light rail -- a solution beloved by planners but normally spurned by motorists. 

 

The Third Crossing, unlike the other projects proposed last fall, is made necessary by the facts of geography. Reforming local land use practices will not reduce the increasing traffic across the Chesapeake Bay.