The Virginian-Pilot
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Expanding the Midtown Tunnel is one of Virginia's two greatest needs for creating more transportation capacity, according to a report released Monday.
The state's top priority, said the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials report, is establishing tolls on Interstates 95/395 carpool lanes in Northern Virginia for drivers who don't have the required two passengers in order to ease congestion in the regular travel lanes.
State highway officials are close to committing to a public-private partnership to make the Midtown Tunnel project happen.
The $1.7 billion package also includes extending the Martin Luther King Freeway and rehabilitating the Downtown Tunnel.
It would be funded through tolls, estimated at $2 to $3 for cars and $6 to $9 for trucks.
The Midtown Tunnel - which connects southwest Norfolk and the northern tip of Portsmouth - is the most heavily traveled two-lane highway in the state.
"When there is an accident or vehicle breakdown in the tunnel, the entire regional network is impacted," Virginia Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton wrote in the report.
An additional two lanes will increase capacity, relieve congestion, reduce travel times and improve air quality, he added.
John Horsley, AASHTO's executive director, said at a news conference Monday that the report, called Unlocking Gridlock, "shows that we are experiencing system overload."
"While congestion levels declined with the recession, congestion is now returning, costing millions in lost time and productivity. Capacity increases are needed in transit, rail, and particularly in highways."
The report notes that from 1980 to 2006, traffic on the interstate system increased by 150 percent while interstate capacity grew by only 15 percent.
Debbie Messina, (757) 446-2588, debbie.messina@pilotonline.com
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<<< Would it be smarter to
<<< Would it be smarter to put a tunnel crossing between Teminal Blvd and the Crainey Island to connect with the Western Freeway (RT 164)? >>>
That would be a portion of the Hampton Roads Third Crossing, and that tunnel will be 6 lanes wide with 3 tubes. A needed project in the future, but even that one segment will be vastly more expensive to build than the much nearer term priority of adding a 2-lane Midtown tube.
<<< A tunnel expansion won't
<<< A tunnel expansion won't work because Hampton Blvd can't be expanded. >>>
It will work very well... Hampton Blvd is a 4-lane arterial, and Brambleton Ave is a 6-lane arterial, and they are connected to the tunnel approach road by an interchange, and they have ample capacity to handle the 60,000 to 75,000 vehicles per day that a 4-lane Midtown Tunnel could handle. About half of the traffic to and from the tunnel is to each of those two arterials.
Maybe
I'm misunderstanding but the 4 lanes on Hampton and 6 lanes on Brambleton don't run in the same direction and traffic backs up in one direction in the morning and the opposite direction in the evening. In the evening, the ONE lane on Hampton and ONE lane on Brambleton have to merge to create ONE final lane to go through the tunnel. If the tunnel is expanded to 2 lanes going into Portsmouth you still have at least 4 lanes of traffic merging into 2, assuming the entrance ramp coming from Brambleton is expanded & the left lane of Hampton offers an option of going into the tunnel or towards downtown Norfolk. This could alleviate some congestion but adding the tolls will create another bottleneck...which seems like a wash to me. That said, I might be looking at this all wrong...I definitely do not have the answers.
Tolls? haha
Fat chance! Tolls will just anger drivers and they'll go another way, adding to the other bottlenecks in the area. The point is to alleviate traffic, is it not? BTW, tolls will only cause another bottleneck, one you have to pay for! Unfortunately, this area will probably always have problems with traffic because you have to cross a bridge or go through a tunnel to get anywhere (efficiently). A tunnel expansion won't work because Hampton Blvd can't be expanded. I agree with comments that people need to take the bus however, the busses don't run frequently enough or have stops in many locations/neighborhoods. The two (ridership & bus frequency/efficiency) go hand in hand. I think the money should be used to build at least one park & ride (a large under/above-ground parking deck, not a parking lot) in a strategic location, then busses could pick up/drop off there and go straight to downtown Norfolk and the Navy Base. Since everyone comes from different directions, it might make sense to have 2 locations of a smaller size rather than one huge park & ride. I would gladly pay $2/day to be driven to work in less traffic. Building a bridge might work as well. Which would be more
some people don't travel much
Try driving to New York City and back from Hampton Roads and see how many tolls you run into.
i have no problem with tolls
I have no problem with tolls. Afterall, if you are going to use it then pay for it. People want to scream about taxes, but they want everything under the sun and it just can't work that way. If you think taxes are high here try living in other states.
The logical way to expand
The logical way to expand the Midtown Tunnel, is how it is planned -- add a parallel 2-lane tube and convert the complex to a 4-lane divided highway, with one 2-lane tube for each direction of traffic. Just like the tunnels on I-64, I-64 and I-664. High traffic volumes in a 2-lane 2-way tube are problematic, as can be seen.
With regard to building the new tube with 3 lanes, that would vastly increase the cost of construction. Better to put that extra money toward the Third Crossing.
With regard to my comment that buses can carry as much ridership as light rail, I used "buses" as in plural. A single light rail train can carry more than a bus, indeed, but light rail wouldn't carry more than about 4 trains per direction per hour, and if it took 20+ buses per direction per hour to equal that, the tunnel tube could easily accomodate that, as its capacity would be around 4,000 vehicles per hour.
Pay attention to where traffic goes when it gets out of tunnel.
I commute through MTT everyday and see that the biggest part of the traffic through the tunnel is going to or from the Naval Base, NIT and ODU. That being said, why is it the highway officials don't see that even if there were three tunnels at the mid-town there would still be a bottle-neck on Hampton Blvd? Maybe the problem is due to the ignorance of the officials seeking the wrong solution to the problem. Would it be smarter to put a tunnel crossing between Teminal Blvd and the Crainey Island to connect with the Western Freeway (RT 164)? Hampton Blvd was not build to handle the traffic volume or the heavy truck traffic. If we are going to spend all this money on a new tunnel, let's make it an effective solution to the problem, not just another rush hour parking lot. Get the traffic out off of Hampton Blvd and out of Ghent. Maybe the traffic officials should actually go out and observe where the traffic is going between 5:00 and 9:00 AM and 3:00 to 7:00 PM.
Times Change
Times Change. There was a time when both the naval bases as well as the shipyard needed tunnels instead of bridges between them and the open sea. This may still be true for the naval bases; but not the shipyard. Build a bridge, not a tunnel above the Mid-town tunnel. Or better yet, build a bridge north of NIT to Newport News that carries both cars and fast (not light) rail. We are too locked into the cold war mentality and need to reconsider when a tunnel is needed and when a bridge can suffice. Bridges are quicker and cheaper than tunnels.
No Tolls
You know, I've said it before and I'll say it again. Tolls are FAR more expensive to us than a gas tax.
As a commuter, if I work 50 weeks per year and pay $2 each way, that's $1000 a year for tolls. By comparison, if you had a car and put 15,000 miles per year on it and got even as low as 20mpg, it would be the equivalent of a $1.33 tax increase per gallon to come up to that same $1000. I suspect they could slap a 25 cent per gallon tax on gas, have MORE than enough money to pay for the project, AND we wouldn't have to stop for toll booths.
You know what I find interesting, though? At $2 per vehicle and using an estimate I found on the web that 46,000 vehicles travel midtown per day and 95,000 vehicles travel downtown per day - that comes out to well over $1 billion in just a single year. (and that's if everyone only paid $2, which is NOT the proposal.) At the rates they are proposing, the whole project should be paid for in a matter of a few years....think the tolls will go away afterwards????