Tunnel tolls bring real cost to residents of Portsmouth

People in Portsmouth think they're getting a raw deal.

They say they're shouldering a huge burden, through new tolls, to reduce congestion and upgrade roads in the region.

"You're going to create an island here in Portsmouth," Mayor Kenny Wright told me.

The mayor and others are right.

But what can the folks in Portsmouth do besides bemoan their fate? A rally Wednesday at City Hall, trying to spark a better accord for residents, was way too little, way too late.

It's like closing the floodgate after a tunnel is already swamped.

The state announced a $2.1 billion agreement this week with Elizabeth River Crossings in a public-private partnership. Tolls between Norfolk and Portsmouth will help finance improvements at the Downtown Tunnel, build a second tube at the Midtown Tunnel and extend the Martin Luther King Freeway. The costs for cars at the tunnels will be $1.59 for off-peak hours and $1.84 for peak hours to start, but those figures will rise over time.

Those fees will affect every person who regularly commutes from one side of the water to the other. Tolls will hit motorists especially hard in Portsmouth, where the poverty rate is 15.2 percent, 5 points higher than the state total, and the median household income is $44,410, about $16,000 less than the state figure.

People who live and work in downtown Portsmouth wondered if anything could lessen the sting.

Wright questioned whether the state could foot the bill for the transponders that residents will use with the E-ZPass system.

"We were on budgets before the recession," said Tobbie Pettaway, who manages Touch of Style Barber Shop at 323 High St. "... It will affect a lot of businesses."

William E. Kass, a personal injury attorney, said he'd probably offer to pay clients the cost of the tolls when they come to his Portsmouth office.

All of this backlash mystifies Greg Whirley, commissioner of the Virginia Department of Transportation.

He told me Wednesday that the state already had boosted its contribution - to $362 million - to reduce the cost of the tolls.

Plus, the state held several meetings with local and regional officials about the tunnel plans. A May 2010 article in The Pilot began: "State officials are negotiating for lower proposed tolls with a private group that wants to expand the Midtown Tunnel." That's when the base rate was $2.17 for cars.

Could Portsmouth get help, as Wright has suggested, from the $500 million in state funding committed to a new U.S. 460?

"I am not taking money off 460 to (use at) the Midtown," Whirley said.

He contends people in Portsmouth aren't focusing on what the project will bring to the area - jobs, greater mobility and a boost to the economy.

The state, though, shouldn't be so obtuse.

This was a Hobson's choice, after all: Local residents could either take a toll-backed solution on the Midtown-Downtown project or get nothing from the state.

On the other hand, Gov. Bob McDonnell will be able to crow that he got a project built without raising taxes. That will boost his conservative bona fides nationally.

The private companies will be able to raise toll rates at least 3.5 percent annually.

And regional motorists? Why, we get to bear the brunt - again - of building infrastructure for Hampton Roads and the rest of the state at the same time. No other region in the commonwealth gets hammered with tolls quite the same way.

So the guv and his assistants shouldn't blithely dismiss the pleas of Mayor Wright and others.

After the state did so much to Portsmouth, the commonwealth should be doing something for it.

Roger Chesley, (757) 446-2329, roger.chesley@pilotonline.com, pilotonline.com/chesley