In a region with no shortage of annoying interstate problems, the exit ramp at westbound Interstate 64 heading to Newtown Road and I-264 stands out.
The ramp is one of region’s more accident-prone, a narrow lane with a quick drop in elevation that has led to 172 accidents and 67 injuries in five years – six times the statewide norm.
During the morning rush hour, backups extending almost a mile east to the Twin Bridges are so common that many avoid the ramp altogether.
The ramp is not the only problem. Cramped travel lanes also extend almost four miles to the east along I-264 where other exit ramps at Witchduck Road funnel traffic into a confusing confluence of five streets and interstate ramps.
But relief may be on the way.
State highway officials are developing one of their most ambitious interstate upgrades in years and have accumulated almost three-quarters of the $230 million needed to begin the project.
The Virginia Department of Transportation wants the public to look over its plans and will host a meeting Wednesday at Kempsville High School in Virginia Beach.
Transportation Secretary Pierce Homer this week called the project “a high priority of the commonwealth” before pledging to find the rest of the money needed to build it.
“It is one of the worst safety and congestion hot spots on the entire East Coast,” Homer said.
VDOT has set aside $166 million – about 72 percent of the total needed to get started. If the final pieces of funding are put in place, landowners agree to be moved and utilities can be relocated, then VDOT hopes construction will begin in 2012.
The project would displace at least 31 businesses and their tenants, including two 7-Elevens, a funeral home, a cell phone tower and some parking at First Baptist Church of Norfolk.
“We’ll lose some significant parking spaces, but we support this because it will help the community,” said Steve Harper, a church spokesman.
In addition to parking, the church also would lose a large utility building, a component of its air-conditioning system, and would find itself penned in with huge sound walls.
Still, Harper said, he likes the idea because it would address problems that led him to change his morning commute.
“I don’t come to work that way anymore because the traffic is so bad,” he said.
The ramp from westbound I-64 is simply too narrow, said Ian D. Johnston, VDOT’s project manager. Many commuters know this ramp as the one at the end of a double white stripe on westbound I-64 that’s intended to help traffic line up for the exit.
“It’s kind of like trying to push a gallon of water through a small pipe,” Johnston wrote in an e-mail. “It can only pass so much.”
To fix it, VDOT would double the width of the ramp, allowing some traffic to head directly to Newtown Road, as it does today, and some to bypass it completely via a bridge to I-264’s eastbound lanes.
The Newtown Road interchange would be reconfigured to eliminate a major problem that troubles drivers today: the weaving of vehicles trying to get on and off the interchange.
The ramp that leads to I-264 eastbound, now located off Newtown, would be moved to a new location off Greenwich Road, Johnston said.
The wider ramp at I-64 westbound would become a lane on I-264 that would extend east to Witchduck Road. The southern portion of the I-264/Witchduck interchange also would be rebuilt to address congestion.
Grayson Road, which feeds a large office park next to the interstate, would have a wider interchange with Witchduck, according to the plans.
To improve efficiency there, Greenwich Road would be removed from the interchange and made into a cul-de-sac, allowing new sets of ramps to give improved access to I-264, Johnston said.
“When you have a five-legged intersection as you do there, it reduces its capacity because you have to give so much green time on the traffic light to allow movement for each approach to the intersection,” Johnston said.
Separate from the state project, the city of Virginia Beach is managing a $99 million effort to widen Witchduck Road and rebuild the intersection at Princess Anne Road.
Among the more notable features of VDOT’s I-264 project is another new bridge that would cross over the interstate and connect the now-dead-ended Greenwich Road with Cleveland Street near Virginia Beach’s Town Center.
A bridge would give Virginia Beach a new and badly needed east-west connection that could ease overall congestion in the Cleveland Street areas, he said.
The project is not part of the Hampton Roads Transportation Authority and does not depend on tolls to help pay the debt.
Adam Jack , Hampton Roads preliminary engineer, said VDOT will likely pay for the work in the traditional way with money it has from existing sources plus federal contributions.
“Obviously, we’re about $60 million short, but we’re working to make sure that amount will be made up in the future,” he said.
Tom Holden, (757) 446-2331, tom.holden@pilotonline.com
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Problem never solved but I know who is HAPPY we will pay more
You can build roads, new interchanges & tunnels all you want but congestion will remain. Visit Tokyo, New York, London, Los Angeles or DC. They have lots of nice roads but congestion continues. This new plan is extremely expensive which we will all pay for in taxes, tolls and further delay. Why do we not want to grasp options like carpool, take the bus, support light rail to the beach, ride scooters & motorcycles and buy smaller cars? Plus pushing for increased rail service. I will still be riding my motorycle as much as possible. Doing my errands off peak hours. Knowing that very few like these comments and will not change then hello higher transportaion costs. Live with it you wanted it. The engineers, planners, gravel, concrete, steel, bridge & road contractors are so very happy for this plan. Watch them as you drive by don't they always seem to be laughing. Oh gosh it might rain today better prepare to close up shop boys. Leave all these road cones in place though. Cya at Hooters.
Dangerous Ramp???
Maybe that ramp feeding 264 is only dangerous because of bad drivers. Most every time I come through it the only problem is somebody who is afraid and going 40 MPH on that ramp, with 20 cars backed up behind them. However, last month I had a car in front of me slam on their brakes at the bottom of the ramp for no apparent reason. I nearly hit them and I always follow at a safe distance! My estimation: Too many crappy drivers on the roads are the cause of most of these 'accidents'. They aren't really accidents at all, just ineptitude. They are substandard drivers that shouldn't bet out there anyway. How many times have you heard of someone who could NOT get their license because they could never pass the test? Not often I'm sure. We should make the driver's test much, much harder to weed out the inept!
too many cars
The west bound I-64 to I -126 split coming from Chesapeake should have a jersey barrier all along where the single solid white line starts. That would keep 90% of the morons racing up and trying to get past everybody else so they can dive in front of the normal drivers. Use cameras to catch law breaking idiots for the issuing tickets. If you did that you’d have enough money in 6 months time to build a third crossing and a tunnel into Portsmouth. Hire the road crews they use in Jacksonville, FL. They get the job done fast and they don’t have 200 people standing all day watching one guy with a shovel digging a hole.
Hey littlevoice!
"Battlefield is not as congested as the interchange."
Don't worry. Chesapeake city council is getting dumber and greedier by the day and plowing over dirt, grass and trees to over-develop every square foot they can grab. They had great teachers --- Virginia Beach's dumb and greedy city council.
some good improvements
Many of us can remember when that single lane curving exit was the main route from 64E to 264E. The flyover and the overpass at the VB Blvd / Military Hwy intersection are probably the two best single improvements made in our area.
???
1. Ban Cell Phones
2. Require drivers to either get in the lane they are supposed to be in to use a off ramp, or the go on by, stopping in the middle of the highway should be serious traffic offense with a serious fine attached.
3. Double white lines? What a joke.. Either station troopers or cameras to enforce them, or remove them, people ignore them and cause even more trouble.
4. That side lane coming to the Witchduck, you know, the one that is for afternoon traffic? Has a sign that says Lane Closed, during off hours, that everybody ignores, ans someday will kill someone, whose car is pulled off to the emergency lane but couldnt get off the side lane. Some idiot who doesn't know what "X lane Closed X" means is going to kill someone as they ram him at 55 plus. Get some damned enforcement over there!
5. In fact get some enforcement in general! People speed, cut people off in a reckless manner, what till the last second to get over to the off ramp lane causeing traffic tie ups, and accidents.
AND while we are at it, pass a law making it a crime to play your radio or cd or whatever so loud in your car, that it can be heard from 3 cars away and your car is vibrating to
Public Transportation
If they would get some public transportation in here, then the problem wouldn't be so bad, if at all there. All these improvements are going to do is give a new direction to traffic congestion. The main reason for any traffic congestion is distractions, rudeness, impatience, carelessness, the list goes on.
What they need to do is everytime people go and renew their license, they should take the driving test over again. That way we can correct some of the bad habits most of these drivers have picked up.
4 YEARS WILL BE TO LATE
just take a look at how vdot has handled , highway planning in newport news , what a mess , it took ten yrs to make improvements to the highways on I64, and has been ten yrs of mistakes , vdot will never get it right , i firmly believe that everyone in the transportation planning sector in virginia, is not qualified to plan a birthday party let alone decide on road improvements , and they want to pay for this by adding a a fee to use the road , I do not see how adding toll to the road will ease conjestion , i believe it will only create even more conjestion , I the off ramps are the problem lets get some of our police officers out there during rush hour at the end of the ramps and direct traffic , traffic lights at the end of the ramps are the main problem in my opinion ,
It not free
The HRTA, an unelected body unaccountable to no one, is about to get 160 million dollars a year forever from the taxpayers. This is the beginning of an organization that will soon be drunk on public money. One project with no tolls and the rest of the projects will empty our wallets and put tolls in every driveway.
priorities
why did the I-64 improvements @ Battlefield Blvd. get priority over the interchange? even under construction, Battlefield is not as congested as the interchange.
LOL!
Redesign the dumb, dangerous and inconsiderate drivers. Hampton Roads is loaded with them.
WOW
2012.....I can't wait !!By then it will be twice as bad as it is now !!!
Drivers are making it worse
I work in that office park off of Grayson Rd and live in Chesapeake. To go to work, I get off Indian River Rd and go the back roads to Witchduck. It's tedious, but I totally avoid that interchange mess on 64, where people STILL stop in the middle lane to get to the ramp going to 264, where people STILL ignore the double white lines. Coming home is worse though. Trying to make a left turn onto the ramp to 264 on Witchduck is a total joke. It wouldn't be so bad if southbound cars would use their right turn signals to turn onto the ramp. So I use Greenwich Rd and save a lot of time. However, the ramp to 64 west from 264 is equally as bad because people stop in the middle lane to try to get in the right lane. It's the cars stopping while others are trying to go straight that cause the biggest problems.
Leave Greenwich Alone
When the "system" becomes plugged with accidents on I-264, sometimes the only way out of the area between 64 and Independence Blvd. are the backroads connecting to the East side of Greenwich. It is not unusual for Princess Anne to be crammed full of cars, Newtown to be stagnent, and Witchduck to be loony, but Greenwich remains the pressure relief for many. Another excellent opportunity to foul up travel in this region two more times, once for the ten year construction phase, then another once complete and clogged up again. Leave Greenwich alone and ban cell-phone use behind the wheel instead. Accidents are more often caused by drivers with cell-phones crammed up against their two-eared butts instead of the roadway that has been there for decades.
On backroads, if the tolls resume, those are the routes for me. Save gas by going less than super-highway speeds. The right routes have few stop lights and fairly continuous travel albeit at a more relaxed speed.