Hampton Roads leaders fume over road funds

CHESAPEAKE

Frustration bubbled over Wednesday among regional leaders fed up with being bypassed for federal and state money for road improvements. And it happened on a morning of horrendous gridlock at the tunnels.

Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization members complained that their own lack of unity, poor communication and inability to prioritize needs have hampered their success at driving home transportation dollars.

"Let other people have the money," Norfolk Sen. Yvonne Miller, transportation committee chairwoman, scolded the leaders that comprise the planning group. "That's not what you mean to say, but that's what you're saying."

The result: the kind of bottlenecks that happened during the morning commute when the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel and the Midtown Tunnel closed for crashes, sending motorists to the other already-overburdened water crossings.

Two items on the planning organization's agenda Wednesday sparked the sometimes-heated exchange.

One was an analysis of how Hampton Roads fared in the state's Six-Year Improvement Program that was adopted later Wednesday by the Commonwealth Transportation Board in Richmond. It shows that Northern Virginia is again getting the bulk of state road-building money.

"Northern Virginia works together as a unit on transportation - we need to do that," Miller said. She said the cities and counties in Hampton Roads must educate their representatives about the needs and the priorities for the region so they can work to bring back money.

"The noisy wheels get the oil in Richmond," Miller said.

Philip Shucet, Hampton Roads Transit president and CEO, said he was never visited by the Hampton Roads delegation while he was Virginia Department of Transportation commissioner, whereas the Wise County delegation, from the western corner of the state, came twice a year.

"It boils down to being very crystal clear about what matters," he said.

The other contentious agenda item was an application for a second round of federal TIGER, or Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery, grants totaling $600 million. The region came up empty-handed in the first round.

Five projects were proposed for submission in the second round, including widening Dominion Boulevard in Chesapeake, the Lesner Bridge replacement in Virginia Beach, U.S. 58 improvements in Suffolk, an Amtrak train station in Newport News and a multi-modal transportation hub in Norfolk. They were not ranked in importance.

The transportation body has been trying to develop a computerized tool to prioritize transportation projects, but it's been delayed by work to add new measures to the base version originally proposed.

The General Assembly members at the meeting, Miller and Chesapeake Del. John Cosgrove, agreed that not prioritizing the five projects is a mistake and puts the region at a disadvantage.

That opinion was echoed by the Federal Highway Administration's Virginia division head Irene Rico, who said Hampton Roads would be in "a better position" with a ranked list.

"We talk prioritization... but we fail to act," said Dennis Heuer, VDOTs Hampton Roads administrator.

After coming out of the last TIGER grant round with nothing, Heuer warned, "We're not using this as a learning opportunity."

Shucet said that while he agreed the region's long-range transportation projects should be ranked, he suggested the federal grant application should not be.

"We have to be careful we do not substitute our judgment for the judgment of the people awarding the grant," he said.

Debbie Messina, (757) 446-2588, debbie.messina@pilotonline.com