Posted: December 18, 2009

Some on the transportation panel agreed the proposed expansion of the Midtown Tunnel is the first priority.

By Michael Schwartz
michael.schwartz@insidebiz.com
Hampton Roads dished out some cruel irony in the form of a bridge-tunnel traffic jam to those who attended a transportation panel discussion on the Peninsula last week. It was fitting testament to the problems at hand.

If any one of the 180 attendees at the latest quarterly Cox Business Executive Discussion Series had doubts about the region's traffic problems, the backup on the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel immediately following the event, well after the morning rush hour, illustrated the challenges the five panelists said a maritime-rich region must grapple with in solving rising congestion.

The tone was set by panelist Dwight Farmer, executive director of the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission and Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization, who shared some grim statistics.

The average afternoon peak backup on the HRBT is between 3 1/2 and 6 1/2 miles, Farmer said. The afternoon backup is two miles for the Downtown and Midtown tunnels, and about two miles for Interstate 64 westbound on the Peninsula.

The average speed at the region's bridges and tunnels: 10 miles per hour, he said. The average speed on regional interstates: less than 25 miles per hour.

It doesn't get much better on local urban roads where average door-to-door speeds are about 15 miles per hour.

"That's about the speed folks were attaining in 1909," he said, half joking.

Philip Shucet, president of The Philip A. Shucet Co. and former commissioner of the Virginia Department of Transportation, described another form of gridlock - the fact that the public demands that traffic issues be solved yet no one wants to pay for solutions through taxes or tolls.

Shucet reminded those in attendance of that contradiction, pointing out that in 2002, two out of three voters voted against a referendum for transportation funds. And earlier this month, a poll showed nine of 10 said they were against an increase in the federal gas tax.

"Stop arguing, stop pointing fingers and say, do we or don't we want to move forward with our transportation," Shucet said.

Time is a terrible enemy, he said. Every year we wait to build a new Midtown Tunnel will cost the region another $160 million to $200 million, enough money to have built another High Rise Bridge.

Rather than arguing about which project is first on the list and which city it's in, "do something," Shucet said. "Build something."

The command brought cheers from the audience.

Moving forward with a proposed project requires prioritization, a theme that ran throughout the discussion.

Farmer said HRPDC will soon unveil a report that scores transportation projects' level of prioritization by measuring utility and economic vitality.

Some on the panel agreed the proposed Midtown Tunnel expansion project is the first priority.

Taxpayers and politicians must see eye-to-eye on that $2 billion project, which has been proposed as a public/private partnership.

The project will include tolls, not only on a new Midtown Tunnel to be built, but on the existing tunnel and those nearby, including the Downtown Tunnel.

"If you toll one facility you will push traffic to the others," said panelist Pierce Homer, state secretary of transportation.

There are economic reasons for ending the gridlock and ending an aversion toward tolls, Homer said.

The maritime industry and the presence of the military are the reason Hampton Roads survives, he said. Both are dependent on transportation infrastructure.

"If we do not do a better job we may not have them there as a backbone to our economy," Homer said.

Transportation projects historically are funded by the gas tax and the sale of motor vehicles.

"Neither of those are terribly healthy businesses right now," Homer said.

If it's true that the answer is the public/private partnership, through which private industry comes to the table with a way to profit from a transportation project, those parties won't come to the table in an area where localities or states don't some skin in the game.

For that to happen, Farmer said, "you're going to get that four-letter word 'toll.'"

Speaking loudly, Sen. Yvonne Miller (D-5th District), chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, went after the business angle in an attempt to appeal to the audience of businesspeople.

"We can't 'either/or' about it if we are to have a viable business climate," Miller said.

Hampton Roads is an area where one accident in one tunnel can bring the entire region to a standstill, Miller said. This was evident on July 2, when traffic incidents and tunnel malfunctions made it impossible to get in or out of Hampton Roads on the eve of one of the busiest holiday weekends of the year.

"If we are to remain a first-class part of Virginia," Miller said, "traffic problems must be solved."

She questioned whether the state's governor-elect, Bob McDonnell, can handle the situation as he proposed during his campaign.

"Now we have elected a governor who is supposedly able to do transportation out of existing funds," Miller said.

"It will be the act of a magician," she said, to fund needed transportation projects without raising taxes in a time when the state runs a deficit and is already making cuts.

Panelist Don Goldberg, president of D.D. Jones Inc., a trucking and distribution company based in Chesapeake, knows firsthand how traffic affects businesses.

"A mile a minute," Goldberg said, referring to the fact that 20 years ago one could move around the region at such a rate.

That was a selling tool he used during his days as Chesapeake's director of economic development when trying to convince businesses to locate here.

"I'm sorry I can't say that anymore," he said.

Goldberg's trucking company has 56 trucks a day on the road. His fleet used to leave home base around 6 in the morning to be able to make rounds and return at a normal hour. Today they leave at 2 a.m.

Homer tried to present a few bright spots on the transportation front. He said the Gilmerton and Jordan bridge projects and the emergence of the Midtown Tunnel as a priority project, are positive signs. Other projects receiving attention are the Martin Luther King Freeway Extension project proposed for Portsmouth and an extension of I-564 to feed traffic more smoothly into Naval Station Norfolk.

Judith Brown of the Hampton Roads Public Transportation Alliance wanted to know why none of the panelists mentioned how the use of public transportation might play a role in the region's traffic fix.

Farmer jumped in with another statistic and responded that a more immediate and cheaper fix than public transportation might be carpooling.

If 2 to 4 percent of us currently riding solo to work were to carpool randomly once every two weeks, "severe congestion goes away," Farmer said.

Such efforts "require a shift of culture," Cathy Lewis of WHRO, who moderated the panel discussion, pointed out. But it's a shift of culture that won't come easily in Hampton Roads. Driving is highly valued by locals, Shucet said, citing yet another stat: "We own more cars than we have registered drivers in Hampton Roads." nib

Inside Business was a co-presenter of the transportation discussion with Cox Business.