The Virginian-Pilot
©
RICHMOND
The state highway department has asked three private road builders for plans detailing how they would construct a new U.S. 460 between Suffolk and Prince George County as a tolled expressway.
The new road is envisioned as a 55-mile business route running parallel to the existing U.S. 460 lanes, built in the 1930s and widened about 20 years later.
Cost estimates submitted by the three road builders in 2006 ranged from $1.05 billion to $1.55 billion. Each would require hundreds of millions in public money to build.
Updated proposals, which may be scaled back because of a lack of public funds, are due by Aug. 14.
"We're trying to hammer down a hard cost for the project and hear from the private entities what it would cost and how they would pay for it," Virginia Department of Transportation spokesman Jeff Caldwell said Friday.
Tolls will likely be part of the revised plans, he said.
State highway officials view the U.S. 460 project as a way to accommodate freight vehicles, provide traffic relief and create another Hampton Roads evacuation route.
The highway department, meanwhile, is reviewing a bid submitted last fall for the Downtown/Midtown Tunnel and Martin Luther King Freeway extension project.
Julian Walker, (804) 697-1564, julian.walker@pilotonline.com
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And the Present 460???
"State highway officials view the U.S. 460 project as a way to accommodate freight vehicles, provide traffic relief and create another Hampton Roads evacuation route."
460 is already all three of these things. The only "flaw" is having to occasionally tap your brakes for a town or stoplight. This project is too expensive, with or without tolls, for the sole purpose of bypassing towns and saving maybe five minutes a trip. We should save the money for working on the water chokepoints in town, where the real problems are.
PRIVATE TOLLS A BAD
$2.50 in tolls one way = $1200 a year. that’s $1200, real american dollars. extracted not only from the local economy, but from real live human beings and real families. "regional transportation" projects. Are not regional at all, they’re the entire states economy. if freight is the cause then let freight pay for it. but again the freight is our, all of ours (incld fed). while the past 20 years state growth projects houses / business has increased existing revenue has also. which begs where is the money. Alas it's thin air. everyone point fingers now. which leaves 2/4 choices; build or don't build. tax or toll. $150 tax state wide w/a mix of fuel mileage and registration. raises $22 BILLION in 20 years. it raises $67.5 BILLION over the course of a typical 60 year "private deal". Which do you want to pay 150 /1200.
Upscaled projects may be cut back because of lack of public fund
Responsible government is not how many pennies we have in our cookie jar today but how many pennies we have to spend to solve a problem that we can envision in the next 20 years. That is the sole problem with Hampton Roads traffic congestion/industrial stagnation/evacuation inability is that it lacked vision and leadership to get accomplished what needed to be accomplished. It is difficult to ask a political machine to act in any other way than political.
Tolls
Like them or not, tolls are the fairest tax of all, only the users pay.