TOLLS ARE a horrible idea –particularly for Interstate 264, the route used by hundreds of thousands of people to get to work, to the bases, to the Oceanfront, to shopping centers or simply from one neighborhood to another.
The highway is one of the most important public roads in Southeastern Virginia, an essential transportation tool not just for residents but for the port and for tourism.
While it plays a central role in the life of Virginia Beach, the highway has fallen into disrepair from political miscalculation and myopia.
The highway was built 40 years ago not as part of the interstate system, but as VA-44, with toll revenue bonds. It was designed to be self-sufficient. It used to cost a quarter to drive the 10 miles of the Virginia Beach-Norfolk Expressway from I-64 to the Oceanfront.
Here’s the problem: In 1995, the tolls came off because lawmakers said they’d promised in the 1960s to remove them when the construction bonds were paid off. No reason to charge drivers after the road is paid for, right?
Local lawmakers promised the state would come up with the money to maintain and improve the highway. But that promise was forgotten, and rather than raise the money to keep I-264 in decent shape, Virginia mostly left the road alone.
The General Assembly has consistently refused to raise the gas taxes that could have been used to fix it.
Now the road needs major repairs. In places, it shoulders twice the traffic it was built to handle. Parts of it are littered with broken concrete. Water stands in the medians after a rain. And vehicles waiting to exit at several interchanges regularly back up traffic on the interstate.
Fixing five of the worst interchanges, where substandard lanes, shoulders and bridges need widening, would cost between $1 billion and $1.5 billion.
Everywhere, the country is facing the same problem: how to maintain and improve the highways without enough federal money. With Congress unlikely to raise the gas tax, states are turning to tolls to pay for capital improvements. Virginia is proposing tolls for its tunnels, bridges and highways – admission fees to get to the ocean, from one side of the harbor to the other, even to rural Zuni on US 460.
Last week, a report to the Virginia Beach City Council suggested reinstating tolls, as much as $2.85 to drive round trip between I-64 and the Oceanfront at peak travel times. The report said tolls could raise about 70 percent of the $1.6 billion needed to rebuild the road.
So if we’re going to repair the highway, we’re going to have to find the money locally. The state doesn’t have it. Five years ago, it started dipping into its construction money to cover maintenance costs. By 2014, according to the state Department of Transportation’s forecast, state highway money “will be insufficient to match federal highway funds.” By 2018, “there will be no state highway funds for construction.”
Neither Congress nor the General Assembly will increase the gas tax. Virginians won’t vote for a gas tax. Even if the Hampton Roads Transportation Authority survives this year intact and raises money for regional road improvements, I-264 isn’t one of the projects under its purview.
That leaves tolls. We can either hold our noses and pay, or suffer the consequences of an increasingly clogged and unsafe freeway.
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
I-264
The problem with "I"-264 is not the highway but the dense development that has taken place since it was paved. The large lines to get off of the highway are not the lack of allowable volume that 264 can accomodate, it is the fact that secondary streets cannot handle the payload. You can widen 264 to 10 lanes either way but you still cannot move traffic off of it into traffic lights and residential side streets without a huge backup. The same goes for tunnels. You can widen all you want but the choke point is still the tunnel. Now for the Pilot to advocate an almost $3 toll per day to fix a pig in the poke just goes to show that its sale is long overdue. Keep Kerry but fire the rest of the "tax me please" liberal dolts.
Mass Transit
Apparently someone hasn't been on the 20 (Va Beach Blvd) during rush hour. It runs every 15 minutes and it still gets overcrowded. Ditto for the 1 (Granby St), 3 (Chesapeake Blvd), 15 (Crosstown/Military Hwy), and the 29 (Lynnhaven) during rush hour: they are packed. No, this doesn't cover all routes, but you get the idea. I take it you only see the buses going in and coming out of the garage: of course they're going to be empty. Either that, or you're looking at buses leaving Downtown Norfolk in the mornings or heading into Downtown Norfolk in the evenings.
An out of the box solution
to the I-264 problem...
Accept the fact that Virginia Beach and Chesapeake failed miserably in protecting the military mission at Oceana and Fentress and let the Navy find greener pastures.
With the Navy moving out of Oceana, the drive down I-264 will be eased.
With the major money provider gone to places that actually care to support them, there will not be any jobs that will sustain the idiotic ideas set forth by the Va BCH city council and the town will implode on itself. This will then allow for proper development by smart politicians vice the garbage that has happened for the last 30 years.
Va BCH city council cannot claim that they give two hoots about the people or children of this city when they allowed Corporate landing middle and elementary schools to be built just yards from the end of the APZ2 of one of the busiest runways of Oceana. This school complex was completed in the 1990s.
Toll the tar out of I-264 until it is a waste land, then start anew. NO, do not jack up the gas taxes for all of VA, jack up the fools who have voted in myra and her cronies for so long that have caused this problem.
Wowie Zowie
Your editorial started off being Critical of tolls. I bout fell outta my chair. However; by the time you finished up I noticed that you returned to "Tolls Are the Answer!". Now, that,s my Virginian Pilot. A return to normalicy. By the way, you mentioned backups at "several" offramps as a reason FOR tolls. Dang Lou, Wait until you have tollbooths. Then you'll see a Backup.
Gas tax money is adequate
IF we stop subsidies to the Port of Virginia (4.3%) and to Mass Transit (14.7%) and the State allocates the fuel tax money more fairly.
Hold your nose?
I'm holding my nose at Va Beach City Council for approving all these dense housing areas creating the overcrowded roads. Point your finger in the right direction and hold the Council responsible for this overcrowding.
Give me a break
Now we have the regional transportation authority doing tolling studies and the City of Virginia Beach doing separate tolling studies and the Virginia Pilot as a cheerleader to tolling everything! Let's just toll every car coming out of every driveway!
Red lights and streets
Traffic doesn't back up on the ramps because of anything 264 has done. Witchduck, Independence, and Lynnhaven exits are a mess at rush hour because each of the ramps ends with long, multiple red lights that last seemingly forever. The streets were horribly designed and lights are badly timed, and building new ramps to the same streets doesn't solve congestion. It may push the backups off the highway to a bigger ramp, but the backups won't change. It's Witchduck rd, Independence Blvd, and Lynnhaven Parkway that need the redesign.
Over development & tourism clog old RT 44
Greed. Pure greed. The Va Beach City Council failed to control developers and failed to help push the General Assembly for APF (Adequate Public Facilities) legislation. Old RT 44, now I-264, is over crowded due to too much development and the City's foolish addiction to Tourism. In addition, the General Assembly continues to allow the Transportation Trust Fund to be robbed and "repaid" with IOUs called FRANS. Folks, it is not that the gas tax was not enough to keep RT 44/I-264 maintained, it is that the gas tax money was spent on other things. The fact that I-264 improvements are not funded by HB 3202 is another reason why the HRTA should be abolished.