NORFOLK
The Virginia Department of Transportation scrapped plans to continue working at the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel early Sunday because of heavy traffic, a spokeswoman said.
VDOT had planned to close one westbound lane of Interstate 64 at 12:30 a.m. so crews could continue pumping water from below the westbound roadway of the tube. A storm caused ponding inside the tube early Thursday morning after a water main system malfunctioned. That resulted in the closing of all westbound lane; and later, only one lane was opened with speed limits reduced to 25 mph.
The situation created a traffic nightmare for Hampton Roads on Thursday and again on Friday night, with motorists traveling for hours just to go a few miles.
Holiday traffic was so heavy early this morning that VDOT decided not to close the lane, and will continue the work on another day, said Lauren Hansen, a VDOT spokeswoman.
Traffic on I-64 west at the HRBT was backed up for five miles at 1:15 a.m.
Motorists will not see any water in the tunnel. But VDOT has closed a westbound lane as it pumps the water out from below the roadway. Workers need to access the area through a manhole.
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
Who woulda thunk there'd be heavy traffic this weekend?
A holiday weekend in Hampton Roads always, always, always means heavy traffic, in and out of the region. Duh! Guess VDOT didn't have a working calendar to know what weekend it was. Simply amazing.
Lack of understanding or just Piss Poor Planning
That is the question that I have, did VDOT plan to fail or did they fail to Plan? It seems as though they didn't plan at all, I agree its a 24 hour operation at the tunnel and they have cameras and crew available that should have noticed something wrong, do they not have sensors.
Okay, I get it, equipment malfunctions or breakdown all together, where was the back up plan, where were the water pumping trucks that could have been standing by and ready to go at a moments notice? If I'm not mistaken there is money in the stimulus package for roads...right.
Here's a thought, when one tunnel is expected to be down for an extended time, why don't they just reroute traffic to one tunnel eastbound for all and the other westbound for all, it will still be slow but nothing like what we had Thursday which was no more than normal. What happens when a real disaster occurs, probably a lot of finger pointing and blaming others.
We pay a lot of personal property taxes in Virginia, where is that money going? I not saying we need smarter people working in VDOT because I'm sure they all bring something to the table, but we do need people that can think out the box and come up with vi
Traffic Lemming Convention
Traffic Lemming Convention which occurred Thursday and is continuing for the near future only shows the amount of people who are clueless to fact the VDOT wasted of over 100 million on signs, cameras and sensors to tell the tunnel was blocked and did absolutely nothing to reduce traffic flow. The lemmings just keep heading toward the tunnel. The signs never tell when the problem happened, how long it has been, when it happened or was last updated whether traffic is getting improving or getting worst. The sign saying “tunnel block” is about as first grade thought process as you can get. How about “10:45 hrbt blocked 1 hour est.” Then update the sign when conditions change. Another on “10:45 hrbt 4.5 mile Granby Street (with an up or down arrow indicating getting worst or better.). This would require additional manpower to study the impact of intelligence on the average lemming driving in traffic. We are now studying another hurricane evacuation plan but I think we just saw one live no need to spend another dime.
Really? Hold off?
Could you have decided this before Friday morning's holiday rush hour??? It would have been great to do a 12 mile commute in less than 2 HOURS. I live off 15th view. That was closed, got on to 4th view at the creep and crawl.