Chesapeake VA 168-S City Dumps PB Joint Venture to Go Toll Alone

CHESAPEAKE VA168-S

City Dumps PB Joint

Venture to Go Toll Alone

The City of Chesapeake VA has dumped a Parsons Brinckerhoff joint venture with whom it was negotiating a concession for the $116m 16.5km (10.2mi) Chesapeake Expressway (VA168-South) and will build and own the toll road itself. Assistant City Manager Anne Odell, who is in charge of the toll project, told us several factors lay behind the city’s decision to take the financial risks itself and to drop the private venture partner.

Extra TEA21 federal grant money was the biggest factor because it enables the city to issue revenue bonds itself, she said, and it doesn’t need the extra capital raising capacity the private investors were bringing. Additionally as the design was done and land acquired cost risks were reduced. Another factor was the danger of lengthy litigation by local contractors delaying the concessionaire from beginning work. Local contractors complained that the selection of the joint venture of PB and a local company Jones, under the state’s Public-Private Transportation Act procedures was unfair, and locked them out of bidding for the road work. They were threatening a law suit and court injunctions to stop the concessionaire from breaking ground.

PB and Jones were selected two years ago and they say they had financing and most of the details of a comprehensive agreement with the city worked out and were ready to proceed by late last year. The city is proposing to compensate PB&J to the extent of $575k for their project development costs as part of a settlement.

The city’s Odell says she is looking for a project manager to oversee the 30 month construction which she hopes will start this summer. She says no decision has yet been made but thinks it likely that toll collection will be contracted out: “I don’t think we’ll want to get into collecting the tolls ourselves.”

She is also investigating concessions for a possible service/rest area, and other kinds of revenue generators.

PB had a parallel contract with the city to conduct design of the Chesapeake Exwy. Design of the toll road was completed last November based on a single design-build arrangement. It is now being broken into three projects and regular construction bids will be sought by the city this spring, for construction to start in the summer.

VA168-South will be the final link in a full motorway standard roadway between the I-64/I-664 beltway of the greater Hampton Roads metro area to within 2mi (3.3km) of the the North Carolina state line. In NC the highway is a 4 and 5-lane (center-turns) arterial that lacks access control. The last couple of miles of VA168-S will be built to match the NC arterial road configuration.

Cash tolls will be collected principally from people passing through to visit the resort/holiday areas of the NC Outer Banks from Richmond, Washington DC and beyond.

The plan is to charge a cash toll of $2/car and $1/extra axle. But frequent users will get a big break – 50c/car for an electronic toll with a $10/quarter account maintenance fee. One local politician said, a bit hyperbolically perhaps, that the people passing through Chesapeake in present conditions would “gladly pay a $20 toll.”

Odell says that congestion on the 2-lane mixed use main street Battlefield Boulevard gets so bad on weekends from the extra vacation traffic that “We’ll all be thrown out of office if we don’t get this road built soon.”

Over 25k veh/day creep and crawl through Chesapeake on Battlefield Blvd on summer weekends. There have been reports of the traffic being stalled so badly that it took motorists 2 hours to get through the town and some got out of their cars and organized drinking parties right on the road. Residents have said they feel “trapped” in their driveways. In 1995 the city mobilized portable variable message signs for motorists which read in succession (1) TIRED OF RT 168 GRIDLOCK (2) WHEN YOU GET HOME (3) WRITE TO CONGRESS. It may have helped get some taxpayer money but not enough to pay for the whole road. The city plans to issue $20.5m of toll revenue bonds and some state funding will have to be repaid with toll revenues too, but about three-quarters of project costs come from tax money. Officials concede that out of the weekend and holiday peaks however few people will pay a $2 cash toll.

VDOT already has construction under way on the Oak Grove Connector a 5km (3mi) $40m motorway link between I-64/I-664 at its interchange with I-264. A slightly longer motorway stretch of VA168 to the east of the old road called the Great Bridge Bypass was built earlier in the decade.

Jay Tate the city engineer says a good deal of the construction is in wetland and the agreement with the environmental permitting agencies provides for 2' to 4' of fill so that on about three-quarters of the motorway standard part a central grassed median of 30' (9.1m) pavement edge to pavement edge is followed without a concrete median barrier and guardrails to allow steep banks. Pavement will be 35' of asphalt 2x12' travel lanes each side with 3' paved shoulder left side and 8' paved rightside. There are 9 bridges in total including those of 2 interchanges and a lot of box culverts.

The single mainline toll plaza will have 4 toll lanes each direction, all wired for electronic toll collection. The two central 12' toll lanes will be dedicated ETC designed for highway speed tolling with an 8' shoulder right side and a 3' offset leftside and 3 concrete barriers separating the highway speed traffic by direction and from the traffic stopping to pay collectors. The toll plaza will be located south of Indian Creek Rd in the southern third of the project.

Ramps of the central interchange just north of the toll plaza will be omitted in order to prevent patrons from using the northern section for free. They will have to use the whole of the parallel existing unpriced road to avoid the toll. (Contacts Anne Odell, Jay Tate 757 382 6345)