VA:Toll Projects Discussed

From Ybarra’s window in VDOT’s building on E Broad Street at 14th in city center you can’t quite see the activity but five minutes (out of rush hours) drive south on the old Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike (de-tolled as I-95) there are the first fruits of this ‘public-private partnership’ (PPP). At the interchange of the Chippenham Parkway (VA-150) and I-95 massive circular concrete columns are rising to support a complex new set of interchange ramps which will convert a3-legged T-interchange into a 4-legged interchange and build the Virginia capital’s most spectacular bridge yet over the James River, offering greatly improved links to the Richmond Airport and surrounding commercial areas on the flat east side. (See TRnl#28 Jun 98 p13, TRnl#14 Apr 97 p10) Down by the riverbanks just past the Philip Morris HQ the pier foundations are under construction for twin 4-lane wide, 205m (670') long concrete box girder mainspans. The design is challenging because I-95 here is so close to the river and so low and is just downstream of Richmond’s port which caters to oceangoing freighters. The bridge approaches and ramps connecting to I-95 involve over 3km(2mi) of land bridging to support the long climb to the 44m (145') shipping channel bridge. These are the critical path elements of a $300m “895 Connector” or Pocahontas Parkway project, the rest of which involves 14km (9mi) of 2x2-lane motorway and two more rather basic interchanges, one to a local arterial the other to I-295, the Richmond area eastern peripheral highway. There’s to be a mainline toll plaza and a pair of ramp plazas. Fluor Daniel and Morrison Knudsen are the developers for a public non-profit which has issued $370m of revenue bonds for the project. The Virginia capital already has a splendid motorway system for a metro area of its size (1m pop) but this will add an excellent new east-west axis and enhance the commercial value of the port and airport area.

But all is not plain sailing for these PPPs. The Chesapeake Expressway (VA-168) which was first proposed as a private sector project - by a Parsons Brinck joint venture- is now proceeding without private investors as a city owned toll road. (see TRnl#36 Feb 99 p5)

Hampton Roads anti-toll revolt

And a $650m PPP project for twinning the Midtown Tunnel and upgrading nearby motorways and interchanges in the Richmond-Portsmouth area is in serious question. The city of Portsmouth voted unanimously Apr 13 against tolls, calling on a delegation to go visit Richmond to scout for “alternative financing.” Meanwhile on the other side of the Elizabeth River in Norfolk the council decided to defer a vote. VDOT has said that it won’t proceed to negotiate a concession contract for the PPP project without an affirmative vote from the two cities to be joined by the toll project. (see report p4)

Shirley Ybarra, head of VDOT was scathing when I asked her about the Portsmouth city vote: “The way they talk they must think I run some kind of printing press in here. We don’t have it (money for the Midtown Tunnel) in our six year program or our 20-year program, or any other program I know of. And the governor is not going to support higher taxes. He has been very, very clear about that.”

Apparently though the Wilson bridge on the Washington Beltway will be upgraded without tolls. Ybarra said that the governors of both Maryland and Virginia have ruled out tolls, and the federal government has not suggested them, for this $1.8 billion project. If it ever gets built as planned with 4x3-lanes and enough shoulder pavement to serve as relief to Reagan National Airport – a judge just threw out as unlawful the environmental impact and alternatives study – it will be the world’s largest and most expensive untolled bridge, and an opportunity to price foregone. Even outside that Virginia has a large roadbuilding program in train, the larger parts of which are:

(1) Widening and rebuilding the 520 km (325mi) long I-81 that runs SW-NE in the folds of the Appalachians along its far western border from 2x2 to 2x3 and 4x2 lanes

(2) I-64 from Richmond to Hampton Roads/Tidewater, a 135km (85mi) road that serves the wonderful Williamsburg historic area is also going from 2x2-lane to 2x3 lanes

(3) Twinning to 2x2-lanes 323km (201mi) of US-460 Suffolk, Petersburg, Roanoke to I-64 near the WV line - the grandiosely styled TransAmerica route

(4) The VA portion through the Appalachians near Roanoke of I-73 Detroit to North Carolina

(5) Springfield Interchange on the Beltway/Shirley Highway (I-95/395/495) one of the most elaborate in the northeast and $350m with I-95 going to 24-lanes immediately south

(6) Widening 34km (21m) the VA part of the Washington Beltway (I-495) with 5th lanes each side to 2x5 lanes for $142m

All these projects are capable of being built in bits and pieces and of being stretched to fit tax revenues. All of them are more or less enhancements of existing roads, according to which logic they cannot politically sustain tolls. So Virginia has no plans to apply under the federal program for tolls on interstates, Ybarra said. TEA21 has increased VA’s annual funding from the feds from $420m to $670m/yr which will support a major program.

If Jim Atwell, VDOT commissioner for finance has any say this state will not “mortgage its future” with any so-called Garvey bonds in which future federal funds are used as security for bond sales. These are being used in Arkansas instead of tolls to rebuild major interstates. Atwell says VA has a well established set of formulae for distributing funds between different regions and kinds of projects, and most of this is predicated on pay-as-you-go.

One of the most unusual PPPs in Virginia has been a longterm maintenance contract on major stretches of I-81 and I-95. For a fixed price contract of $132m VMS, a Sverdrup-Berger joint venture not only mows, salts, plows snow, collects garbage but maintains signage, guard rails, lighting, pavement and bridging. VDOT estimates it is saving $24m or 7%. Atwell says the maintenance contract, now about half way through its 5-year term, seems to be going well but that a full assessment will only be made around the time of its expiry in 2002.

Two possible future toll projects

The secretary, Ms Ybarra in her conversation with us mentioned two future projects in northern and southeast VA that she said could be investor-financed and tolled:

(1) the Western Corridor – a 78km (49mi) $1060m 2x2-lane motorway running from I-95 on the south side of Quantico Marine Base heading north, west of Manassas and west of Dulles airport, cutting the Dulles Greenway near its western end terminating at VA-7 just east of Leesburg.

(2) The Southeast Parkway – 30km (19mi) $450m 2x2-lane road from VA-168 in Chesapeake heading east to the southern edge of the Oceana naval air station then curving north into Virginia Beach terminating at VA-44. (See map p4)

Ybarra said both projects face major obstacles before concession lawyers will lawyer, let alone dirt be moved. The Western Corridor has completed a Major Investment Study and a tentative preferred alignment is selected. It will soon go into Environmental Impact study.

The Southeastern Parkway is presently opposed by the city of Chesapeake and has major wetlands problems. Traffic modeling suggests the rapidly growing southeast of the Tidewater area will be horribly congested without it, since the Virginia Beach area presently relies on a single motorway VA-44 (8 to 10-lanes) for its connections to the road network. The SE Pwy would serve over 20k veh/day in 2015 according to MPO modeling. The road is also regarded as important for hurricane evacaution.

Tidewater Construction has registered an interest in the SE Pwy project but it and the secretary agree that the project is not worth pursuing without the support of the city of Chesapeake and resolution of wetland issues.

The Western Corridor project is the bulk of the Virginia part of a larger Western bypass of the Washington DC metro area. Maryland’s present government has said that any Western bypass should use US-15 (easily widened in MD, but not in VA) and I-70 with a new Potomac River crossing very near Point of Rocks. Virginia by contrast wants the crossing further down the Potomac River near Leesburg. Leesburg is 30km (18mi) upriver from the Beltway’s American Legion bridge, while Point of Rocks is almost 50km (30mi).

Drive along US-15 in this controversial area, and there are several historical signs about the Civil War. The Confederacy’s General Lee kept the Union guessing in 1863 as to where his army would cross the Potomac and threaten Washington. Just north of Leesburg there’s a sign on US-15 announcing “Here General Lee swung his army right to cross the Potomac.” (Its crossing led the army to the famous denounement at Gettysburg PA.)

At Gen. Lee’s Crossing of Potomac

The place of Lee’s crossing, near Spink’s Ferry, is a possible compromise crossing point for a future Western Bypass, but the Maryland Government’s strong anti-highway policies will presently guarantee strong local resistance to any such highway invasion from Virginia into Montgomery Co.

Meanwhile VA has been moving to establish the alignment of most of its portion of this roadway, renamed as the Western Corridor (The acronym is inelegant!), but terminating for now anyway at VA-7 (Leesburg Pike) just a few miles short of the Potomac R – leaving for future politicking the if, how, and where of its continuation into Maryland. The hightech I-270 corridor Rockville-Gaithersburg-Clarksburg MD suffers badly from poor access to Dulles airport, air travelers being presently forced to execute a long congested U-route down to the Beltway and out again on the Dulles Access Road, so one day perhaps Montgomery Co MD will see the need for a new Potomac R crossing, somewhere between Pt of Rocks and the Beltway. For now state protectionism says these I-270 guys should use Baltimore-Wash Airport to the east, though the lack of the east-west Inter-County Connector makes that difficult too.

The Greater Wash Board of Trade advocates two extra Potomac R crossings one originating east of Dulles airport and another west of it. And indicative of some new thinking, the WASHINGTON POST editorial writers, after 25 years of extolling the Metro rail system as the be all and end all of area transport, now favor extra bridges over the Potomac too.

The Western Corridor, I-95 to VA-7, was looked at in a Major Investment Study (MIS) completed late 97 and is now going into enviro study. The MIS found the 4 county area (Loudoun, Prince William, Stafford and Farquier) needs a major north-south motorway. Population 300k in 1980 grew to 446k 1990 and is projected at 932k in 2020. A tripling of north-south commuting is predicted and commuting is 98% auto in this fringe area. Existing motorways are all radial in to Washington DC until the Beltway. Moreover there is an unserved heavy trucking route already developed from southeast VA/northeast NC to western PA and the midwest that is already overloading northern VA’s US-17, an arterial without access control not far from the route of the proposed Western Cdr. Dulles airport especially with air cargo is expected to be a major source of new N-S traffic and a Western Cdr would link directly to I-95 and central VA and the south.

Needs Maryland Connection

Traffic modeling done for the MIS shows traffic volumes on the new road in the range 31k to 46k veh/day in different segments in 2020. A preliminary estimate of net toll revenues (gross revs less op costs) for the whole road predicted a range $18m to $36m/yr, only enough to support between a third and a fifth of the capital cost. $18m/yr was gotten from 5c/mi and $36m from 10c/mi average toll for all vehicles. The tolls were assumed to divert 30% of traffic to parallel free routes, and interest on borrowing of 7%.

Clearly to be viable as a toll road the Western Cdr needs the connection into Maryland, plus perhaps measures to prevent heavy trucks using parallel free roads. And $100m can be saved right off by adopting a more modest right-of-way than the gigantic 450' (137m) swathe that puts the cost over the billion-$ mark. The PB design has room for about 20 HOV lanes, or a new national park in the median – see section bottom p3. (Contact VDOT Lynda South Webster 804 786 2715)