Looking
for a thrill ride? Don’t mess with
Busch Gardens
or Kings Dominion. Try driving down Interstate 81
between Roanoke
and Blacksburg…
at night… in the slashing rain… as
tractor-trailer after tractor-trailer barrels past,
buffeting you with its slipstream and dousing your
windshield with spray. Guaranteed: It’s an
experience you’ll never forget.
Virginia
offers a wide assortment of hellish traffic
conditions, from the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel to
the mixing bowl at Interstate 95/495, but nothing
compares to I-81. It’s one thing to creep along,
frustrated, in stop-and-go traffic. It’s quite
another to fly down the highway, terrified, while
hemmed in by 16-wheelers that could mash you like
road kill.
Daily
traffic on I-81, as measured by the number of vehicles, runs
between 30,000 to 40,000 per mile -- less
than half the number on the worst stretches of
Interstate 95. But the traffic mix
tells quite another story. It’s not the number of
cars but the number of tractor-trailers that makes a
trip down I-81 so hair raising.
Typically,
heavy trucks constitute less than five percent of Virginia’s
Interstate traffic, excepting a couple of spots on
Interstate 95 around Fredericksburg
and Petersburg,
where it spikes up to 10 percent. But
tractor-trailers account for 20 percent or more of
the traffic along the full length of I-81 from Winchester
to Bristol,
hitting a fevered pitch of 37 percent between
Staunton and Lexington.
Incredibly, three percent of all traffic along that
stretch consists of trucks with double trailers!
Driving
on I-81 is not just nerve racking: It’s unsafe.
According to Virginia Department of Transportation
records, I-81 was the scene of 2,845 accidents
causing 32 deaths and 1,628 injuries between March
2001 and August 2002, making it one of the most
dangerous interstates in the country. Meanwhile,
I-81 is developing big-city congestion in places,
especially in the Roanoke metropolitan area where
mountainous terrain constrains the ability of
motorists to travel alternative routes.
I-81,
clogged now, is heading for gridlock. Long-haul
truck traffic is projected to increase from 18
million truckloads annually to 29 million by 2020.
Given current state resources, it could take the
state 30 to 50 years to fund VDOT plans for
expanding the interstate from two to three lanes in
each direction. If western Virginia’s
main transportation corridor chokes up, economic
development in the region -- far more dependent upon
manufacturing and distribution than eastern Virginia
-- could sputter and stall.
Fortunately,
under the Public-Private Transportation Act of 1995,
Virginia
possesses the ability to undertake major
transportation projects through public-private
partnerships. Last year, Gov. Mark R. Warner
challenged the private sector to develop innovative
proposals to overhaul the I-81 transportation
corridor. VDOT's Request for Proposal expanded the
project scope beyond the construction of new lanes
to encompass proposals such as shifting truck
traffic to railroads and incorporating intelligent
transportation systems.
The
response has been gratifying. Two large industry
consortia – STAR Solutions, lead by Halliburton
subsidiary KBR Inc., and a second group headed by
construction giant Fluor Corp. – have submitted
detailed proposals for transforming the corridor
within 15 years or less. What’s more, the
discussion has stimulated some
outside-the-box thinking, not reflected in the formal
proposals, such as a proposal for a
truck-piggybacking service on the Norfolk
Southern rail line parallelling I-81 between
Harrisburg,
Pa.,
and
Knoxville,
Tenn.
VDOT
is expected to pick one of the competing proposals
after completing an environmental review process.
Regardless of which consortium it ultimately
chooses, the exercise is moving Virginia decisively
in a new direction: tapping the private sector to
flesh out new strategic options. The I-81 project
could provide a model for tackling seemingly
intractable transportation problems elsewhere in Virginia.
STAR
(Safer Transport and Roadways) Solutions, the first
consortium to submit a proposal, boldly advocated
expanding I-81 to four lanes each way, a task it
expects to complete within 12 to 15 years. The
distinctive feature is the dedication of the two
inside lanes to long-haul truck traffic, separated
by a barrier from the lanes reserved for cars, buses
and local trucks.
Segregating
truck traffic would eliminate the safety problem
caused by intermingling cars and trucks on the same
lanes. STAR would finance the construction largely
through tolls on long-haul trucks but would offset
costs through improved trucking productivity. Tolls
would be “boothless,” administered
electronically. Dedicated truck lanes, combined with
electronic monitoring and communication
technologies, would support “plattooning,” or
the massing of trucks for improved flow and safety.
STAR
also would lay fiber-optic conduit down the highway,
providing the backbone for “smart” enhancements
such as electronic traffic-alert signage, Internet
access at rest areas, and integration with the state
Transportation Emergency
Operations
Center.
The proposal includes a 20-year pavement warranty,
and a number of multi-modal transportation
improvements.
STAR
estimates the cost of its proposals to be $7.54
billion (in constant 2002 dollars). Financing would
come from three main funding sources: VDOT funds
earmarked for I-81 in the current Six-Year
transportation plan, federal funds earmarked for
separating cars and trucks on interstate highways,
and tolls on trucks. The tolls, starting at 12 cents
per mile in 2006, would escalate to 27.4 cents per
mile when the project is complete. A truck
traversing the full length of I-81 would pay $90.
Fluor
Virginia,
by contrast, developed a relatively stripped-down
proposal. Fluor would limit the widening of I-81 to
three lanes, compared to STAR’s four, supplemented
by 10 truck-climbing lanes on particularly steep
grades. The new lane, in the Fluor plan, would be
limited to cars only. The plan also calls for
improvements to railroad tracks paralleling the
interstate, plus installation of a wireless
telecommunications backbone to support traveler
information, traffic management systems and
work-zone safety.
An
enticing aspect of the Fluor plan is the low, $1.84
billion price tag. Fluor would finance construction
through tolls, but it would require no state money,
allowing VDOT to apply funds earmarked for I-81 to
other projects.
The
lower cost also would mean lower tolls. Fluor
proposes setting up tolls at three locations along
I-81, exempting most local traffic from paying
tolls. However, both trucks and passenger cars alike
would be subject to the tolls. Upon completion of
the project, passenger cars would pay $9 to pass
through all three tolls; trucks would pay $30.
Based
on projected toll charges, the Fluor plan may prove
less objectionable to truckers, distributors and
manufacturers, the most vocal opponents to tolls.
But in theory, the STAR proposal could mollify
trucking companies by boosting trucker productivity.
The key question is whether high-tech traffic
management and “plattooning” offset the $90
truck tolls. Assuming an average operating
cost of $35 per hour and a six-hour travel time from
Maryland to Tennessee, STAR's concrete freightway
would have to shave two hours off the trip to make
its high-priced proposal more attractive than
Fluor's. That could well require raising speed limits to
European autobahn speeds of 90 miles per
hour.
The
drawback of the Fluor plan is that it adds only one
lane (each way). It remains, at best, an
intermediate-term fix.
The
intriguing thing about the I-81 solicitation is the
way it has flushed out novel perspectives. Anderson
& Associates, a Blacksburg engineering firm that
has contributed to the Fluor proposal, has advanced
a radical notion of its own: teaming with Norfolk
Southern to offer a tractor-trailer piggybacking
service between Harrisburg and Knoxville as a way to
get trucks off I-81.
Rather than viewing I-81 in a purely Virginia
context, Anderson sets the challenge in a
multi-state context -- indeed, even an international
one. In a North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) economy, I-81 in Virginia is only one
segment of a transportation artery that stretches from the
huge urban markets of the Northeastern U.S. all the
way to Mexico. Many tractor-trailers are traveling
the full distance.
Anderson's
notion, which it deems complementary to the formal Fluor
proposal, would raise roughly $2.3 billion
to upgrade Norfolk Southern track between Harrisburg
and Knoxville. Financial details are fuzzy but
Anderson suggests that legislation for creating a
federal railroad authority, now working its way
through Congress, might provide a financing vehicle.
In
contrast to conventional intermodal operations in
which containers are switched from trucks to
railroad cars, Norfolk Southern would carry the entire tractor-trailer, including the driver,
who could eat and sleep in a passenger car. According
to Anderson's calculations, about 16,000 trucks
per day are making that 650-mile trip already. If
the piggybacking service could capture 25 percent
market share -- removing 4,000 trucks daily from I-81 -- amortizing the cost of the railroad upgrade over
30 years would come out to $114 per truck. That's more expensive than the STAR option, but
Anderson's proposal has one possible advantage: New
federal regulations may limit the number of miles
per day that a trucker can drive. Riding the rails
for 650 miles to catch some Zs would be a lot more efficient than
pulling into a truck stop for 10 hours.
The
Anderson preliminary proposal leaves many technical questions
unanswered, and it has yet to be
endorsed by a major player like the Fluor consortium
or Norfolk Southern. Its significance lies in the
fresh thinking and new perspectives that it brings
to bear. It's safe to say that VDOT planners,
conceiving the I-81 corridor as a Virginia
problem requiring a highway solution, never would
have conceived the idea of a Pennsylvania-
Tennessee
railroad service.
VDOT
has some tough decisions ahead. Both consortia are
lobbying hard for their proposals. Meanwhile,
Virginia's trucking and manufacturing interests are
resisting tolls that will add to their cost of doing
business. No one wants to pay the tolls -- but
without them, both proposals are dead on
arrival.
Communities
along the I-81 corridor are trying to figure out
what the competing proposals would mean to them.
Economic developers are assessing the trade-offs
between the certainty of increased congestion versus
the potentially negative impact that tolls would
have on corporate site location decisions.
None
of the options are painless. Tolls will impose an economic
penalty upon the businesses and communities along
I-81. But the cost of doing nothing,
arguably, is even greater. At least VDOT has
options. Whatever the final outcome, western Virginia surely will be better
off than if the department had tackled the job all alone.
--
June 9, 2003
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