What is to be done with U.S. 460?
The Times-Dispatch ran dueling op-eds this morning. Pierce Homer, secretary of transportation, makes the case for building a divided, four-lane highway between Suffolk and Petersburg, financing the improvements with tolls and public funds.
Virginia needs an upgraded U.S. 460, Homer argues, for four main reasons: (1) to provide an evacuation corridor out of Hampton Roads in case of hurricanes or other natural disasters; (2) to provide flood-resistant access to communities along U.S. 460, (3) to accommodate the surge of container truck traffic resulting from Hampton Roads ports; and (4) to improve access to the expanding military logistics base at Ft. Lee outside Petersburg. The goals, I think any reasonable person would admit, are all laudable. The question is, are they worth the price tag attached to the project?
The cost is “very substantial,” Homer concedes: in the range of $1 billion to $1.5 billion. Tolls can pay for part of the project, but another $200 million to $1 billion — suggesting a wide range of uncertainty — would have to come from public sources. “Some will brand these sums as excessive or unachievable,” he writes. “But when weighed against our public safety, our economic future, and our national security, these investments in the 460 corridor are necessities of the first order.”
In a companion column, Stewart Schwartz and Lisa Guthrie disagree. Schwartz is executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, and Guthrie executive director of the Virginia League of Conservation Voters.
According to Schwartz and Guthrie, the project is relatively low on the list of Hampton Roads transportation priorities. In contrast to many gridlocked arterials inside the metro area, U.S. 460 is usually free-flowing — and still will be in 20 years!
The big story is that if the new highway is not built, the old U.S. 460 will still be free-flowing along most of its length in 2026. Only the traffic lights in the few towns along 460 contribute to poorer levels of service — a problem that can be addressed by solutions far less costly than a 55-mile-long new highway.
The upgrade would cost between $465 million and $665 million in public funds. That amount of money can pay for a lot of spot improvements to relieve local bottlenecks and leave funds for more pressing priorities.
I’m inclined to agree with Schwartz and Guthrie — at least until more authoritative estimates come in. We need to get a better handle on how much public money the mega-460 alternative would cost. And we need to be able to compare it to the cost and benefits of the “spot improvements” alternative.