Harry Minium
The Virginian-Pilot
©
Drivers found out Thursday just how bad gridlock in this region can get.
A broken water pump inside the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel set off a chain reaction of congestion. On the surface, the broken pump seemed like a tiny cog in the area’s complex interstate bridge and tunnel system, but what happened next was more than anyone had bargained for.
When the bridge-tunnel’s westbound lanes were closed, traffic congestion ended up stretching from morning to evening rush hours on the day before a busy holiday weekend.
While Virginia Department of Transportation crews pumped water out of the tunnel, detouring vehicles spilled onto alternate routes. Traffic at the Monitor Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel backed up more than 20 miles into Chesapeake. The Midtown and Downtown tunnel traffic was stacked up three to four miles into Norfolk, clogging city thoroughfares. The closures of some downtown streets for Harborfest compounded the fiasco.
Local leaders and others expressed outrage over the way VDOT handled the crisis and called the gridlock a harbinger of what could happen during a major evacuation.
They cited Thursday’s events as an example of a limited highway system and inadequate harbor crossings.
“The entire region shut down for most of the day because of one pump,” Norfolk Mayor Paul Fraim said .
“We’re told that the pump failed because of a storm last night that, as storms go, was fairly mild. If we were to have a major storm come through the region or a hurricane, we could have major loss of life.”
VDOT spokeswoman Lauren Hansen said crews worked as quickly as possible to remedy what was an unpredictable situation.
That wasn’t much help for drivers who couldn’t avoid the chaos as about 100,000 vehicles that pass through the westbound HRBT mixed with hundreds of thousands on connecting arteries.
It took Eric Ferguson 90 minutes to get his stepfather, Michael Curry, from Ocean View to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, normally about a 20-minute drive. Curry had suffered a broken knee in a morning fall.
“It’s been an all-day thing,” Ferguson said. “Everywhere it’s been bad.”
The traffic was particularly rough on cargo carriers.
Meredith O’Keefe, assistant terminal manager for Gilco Trucking Co. in Portsmouth, said truckers, who have to criss-cross the region all day, couldn’t make as many trips .
“If it takes all day to do one when he usually can do five to 10 in the same time … it really slows them down,” O’Keefe said.
She spent much of the day on the phone with customers asking about deliveries, but there was no screaming.
Dwight Farmer, executive director of the Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization, said Thursday was a “historic day for transportation.”
“If we don’t wake up after today, I don’t know what we will do.”
Transportation, city and business leaders have pushed since the 1990s for transportation improvements to provide additional access to the region and better hurricane evacuation routes. Those projects include another crossing of the Hampton Roads harbor, expanding the Midtown Tunnel and upgrading U.S. 460 to interstate quality.
But they will cost billions of dollars that current funding sources cannot cover. The General Assembly repeatedly has rejected proposals to raise taxes and fees for transportation funding.
“We have listened to the members of the General Assembly long enough,” Fraim said. “The consequences of what has occurred is a direct result of their inaction to provide adequate funding for transportation.
“We have to have adequate funding for maintenance to make sure that pumps in tunnels are exercised and maintained. We need other routes out of here as well. ... We need passenger rail to South Hampton Roads and another crossing of the harbor. We have an excellent plan for both, but it needs to be funded.”
Added Farmer, “I don’t know how long we can put our head in the sand on this issue.”
VDOT’s Hansen gave this account of what led to the tunnel’s closing:
A severe electrical and rain storm rolled across the bridge-tunnel Wednesday night, causing power outages and power surges. Apparently the power issues damaged a water main pump and possibly caused a water main break in the westbound tunnel. The malfunctions caused the pump house to fill with water, eventually overwhelming it and water seeped into the tunnel’s travel lanes.
The water pooled 4 to 6 inches deep at the mouth of the tunnel on the Hampton side. Tunnel staff were unaware of the problem until about 6:30 a.m. The problem was not detected earlier because the alarm system alerting the control room of a failure is electric and also malfunctioned. Water was shut off and the westbound lanes were closed.
“This is internal water – water from pipes around the tube,” Hansen said. Water mains run through the tunnels for fire suppression systems.
Crews worked into the evening using vacuum trucks to suck the water out of the travel lanes and the pump house before they could reach the source of the problem. Until crews can reach the water main and water pump, the precise damage could not be pinpointed. VDOT was able to reroute the water flow to another pumping system and took the faulty pump off line. One lane reopened at 2:30 p.m. and all were reopened by 7:30 p.m. Repairs will continue throughout the weekend, with at least one line closed over night.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with maintenance of the system – this is a break in the system, something that is not predictable,” Hansen said, adding that the pump system has a weekly maintenance schedule.
At the privately operated Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, tunnel pumps also have alarms that sound in the control room, said Robert Johnson, maintenance director.
The pump system, however, is manually checked multiple times a day.
“We put our hands on the pumps usually three times every eight hours to see if it’s running hot, to see if no current is going through,” Johnson said. “We like to have a hands-on rapport with our equipment and not rely on our sensors to take care of things.”
Fraim said the incident was reminiscent of Hurricane Isabel in September 2003, when the Midtown Tunnel flooded because of malfunctioning floodgates.
“Had this occurred during an evacuation caused by an impending hurricane or major storm, I shudder to think of the consequences,” Fraim said.
Some motorists stuck in the traffic had the same worries.
“This really got me scared,” said Chris Rooks, whose 20-minute commute from Norfolk to Fort Monroe in Hampton took three hours Thursday morning.
“This does have me concerned especially because it’s a hurricane escape route,” he said. “People could drown or get killed.”
Rooks toughed out the commute although several colleagues never made it in. “To have just two routes across the water is crazy,” he said.
Pilot writers Matthew Bowers, Cindy Clayton, Lauren King and Patrick Wilson contributed to this report.
Debbie Messina, (757) 446-2588, debbie.messina@pilotonline.com
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Another HRBT problem!
I for one am sick of the excuses that VDOT gives everytime something happens at the HRBT, those in charge are incompetent and over paid. The recent problem with the pumps that caused all day backups is just another example of how much we need to fire all of the VDOT supervisors and hire people who understand the transportation system. Lauren Hansen, a spokeswoman for VDOT called this an unpredictable situation, what a stupid comment to make. All situations are predictable if you have people in charge that see possible problems that can occur down the road. She says that VDOT people put their hands on the pumps several times a day to insure the pumps are not running hot instead of relying on the sensors. Of course once the person takes their hands off the pump it should be ok until they come back and do it again? Give me a break, if our Navy ran it's ships this way could you imagine the problems that could arise? If our power plants did the same we would be in the dark constantly. Here's an idea, maybe the next time our bright politicians decide to spend millions on an interstate gate system that is totally ridiculous, the money could be better spent on updating the pumps and system
Here's a thought.
Hop on a bicycle and ride past everyone. The office will be nice and quite until everybody else shows up.
Pay now or pay more later
I'm sure that in a couple of weeks most people will forget all about the mess that we had on Thursday and it will be business as usual. The problem is that apparently the commonwealth's laws will not allow us to attempt to fix the problem regionally, and members of the House of Delegates outside of this area (and a few locals as well) could care less about the problems that we have in this area. The state gas tax has to go up. As vehicles get more efficient revenues are going to drop even more. If we had the foresight to increase the gas tax 10 or 15 years ago, many of our now urgent projects would be completed at lower funding levels that we can only dream about now. The longer we wait, the more expensive everything is going to be.
You can thank
the FAILURE of Tom Moss. He was the speaker of the house for years and just sat there in Richmond doing nothing to get Hampton Roads' fair share of the funding. All that time the funds were going to Richmond and N. Virginia. He could have put the brakes on the whole legislative process if he wanted to as leverage to get us what is fair. So as you continue to sit in lines from hell you can thank Moss.
Hundreds of billions
We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars overseas on ridiculous military adventures while our own country goes down the tube. When will the people of this country wake up?
Hilarious!
It is absolutely hilarious to read Greenmun's outrageous posts herein, but what is not funny is how attitude's like his have influenced voters to keep the anti tax republicans as the majority party in the House of Delegates, and the result is now patently obvious for all of us to see. Don't blame Reid; he has not had an original thought in a decade, and his use of misinformation, fear, loathing of the business community, and persistence, has been used by past demogogues to stop rational citizens from acting in the public interest. Fact is, if you have voted for a anti tax republican who supported Speaker of the House Bill Howell, then you are as much to blame as Greenmun, the VBTA, House Republicans, and those who have put their head in the sand and ignored the facts. But you can do something about it; throw the bums out of office, elect Creigh Deeds, and only vote for Delegates who will act, not just promise results. And send the bill for past inaction to Greenmun and his allies at the VBTA.
Yeah, that's all we need
It's all the "anti tax republicans" fault, eh? Really, is that the best you can do? We'll just ignore this whole Nanny/Welfare/Warfare/Entitlement State that both parties at all levels have pushed down our throats and blame those that believe in keeping spending in line with revenues. It's a good thing that high taxes have worked so well for California. 8.25%, they've still got massive gridlock and they've now resorted to issuing IOU's. If you don't think you're paying your fair share, then fine, you send the Commonwealth some extra money but don't try to push your little tax mongers on the rest of us. Stop blaming the tax rate and start blaming the government spending irresponsibly and in the wrong places.
All Aboard !!!!
Who needs roads and improvements? Everyone can just ride the light rail to nowhere in the case of a disaster. That and similar useless pet projects are why this area is in the shape it's in.
Gridlock
There is no third crossing, it is simply a spur road that will lead to the "Candy Bridge" (M&M BT complex; more Traffic stuffed into another Tunnel!)
What is needed is the construction of two or three High rise Bridges that have 5 lanes each way and that would take care of the Gridlock and also be a reliable Hurricane exit route.
As far as funding;put a Toll on the Bridges and watch people pay it instead if sitting in a huge traffic Jam!
Tunnels are and always have been total nonsense.
There will never be a Major League Team or anything of real consequence around here if we continue to build tunnels instead of High Rise Bridges!
2002 Referendum
Do the people (voters) remember rejecting a 1 cent sales tax increase that specifically would build a third crossing, a second midtown tube, the Southeastern Expressway, and several smaller projects? Former state Senator Marty Williams does! The voters voted him out of office for sponsoring the referendum. I remember someone commenting that delaying the contruction of the third crossing by 5 years will put Hampton Roads behind by 20 years. Seven years later. that penny seems cheap now!