Bob McDonnell’s “Road for Nobody” near Hampton Roads insults Northern Virginia

The Washington Post ^ | January 30, 2013 | Robert McCartney

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

A few years ago, Alaska’s proposed “Bridge to Nowhere” became a national symbol of wasteful government spending on little-needed projects.

Now Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) has pushed through his own version of this embarrassment, a $1.4 billion highway outside Hampton Roads that qualifies as a “Road for Nobody.”

McDonnell has perplexed people across the state by his insistence on adding a tolled, four-lane highway parallel to U.S. 460. It will stretch for 55 miles from Petersburg, a Richmond suburb, southeast to Suffolk.

The deal signed in December to build the road is especially insulting to traffic-jammed Northern Virginia, where the need for precious transportation dollars is dramatically greater. Tolls on the new road are expected to cover less than a fifth of the cost.

Numbers tell the story. McDonnell will have Virginia build an entirely new highway to share the traffic on U.S. 460, which carries an average of 9,200 to 17,000 vehicles a day.

By contrast, Fairfax County doesn’t have funds to expand, say, Braddock Road — which, near the Beltway, carries 70,000 vehicles a day.

Local authorities also would like to add two lanes to the Fairfax County Parkway, where volume near the Dulles Toll Road is 63,000 vehicles a day.

McDonnell’s top roads guy, Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton, argues that volume will rise on the new U.S. 460 as the Hampton Roads port expands in coming decades.

“For once, we’re planning ahead,” he said.

But according to the state’s own projections, the total, combined volume on the new and old U.S. 460 will be just 23,000 vehicles a day by 2035.

That’s still less than half the volume on the above-mentioned roads in Northern Virginia. Plus, our region is sure to expand as well, and probably faster than Hampton Roads.

[muawiyah]

Bizarre answer ~ McDonnell is your boy and he's not from Maryland ~ and Tidewater in Southside is not Northern Virginia.

However, if all the Midwesterners who make up the majority in Northern Virginia moved away the rest of the state would turn into the world's 5th largest outdoor slum since nobody would be paying taxes for anything.

Now you wouldn't want that would you?

[muawiyah]

I95/I395 is much busier than the Greenway/Dulles tollroad complex by far ~ and the Hotlane additive is really not going to improve traffic flow.

Soon as McDonnell is out of office the secret underground on the Beltway is going to begin blowing the accesses so we get our HOV lanes back!

[mrsmith]

LOL!
I bet you think your gibberish deserves a reply.

[ArrogantBustard]

You might want to consider recalibrating your sarcasm detector.

Series. It's systemic error is HUGH!

I know whereof I speak, here, as I regularly endure the hellish, crawling, bumper to bumper traffic on the Greenway.

[BubbaBasher]

and Petersburg is NOT southeast of Suffolk. They can’t even get basic geography straight. How on earth can even claim to be a credible news source.

[HokieMom]

Virginia Ping! If you want on or off the Virginia Ping List, please freepmail me.

[Swirl]

What are you talking about. Most of the residence of Northern Virgina are either fed servants, gov contractors, or lobbyist. Removing them would only help!

[muawiyah]

You are nuts. Only 1 out of 7 employed folks here are government employees ~ and that includes a sizeable detachment of Virginia state employees, school teachers, etc.

Fairfax has about 180,000 lawyers though ~ but there's a large federal court establishment in the DC area including a number of specialty courts.

The largest single identifiable industry group around here is a nebulous structure of NON PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS, and most of their employees are involved in printing and mailing.

There are, of course, lobbyists ~ but they are not as massive a body as you might imagine.

Many people imagine that DC is a concentration of federal employment, but it's really not ~ sure we have the headquarters elements of the major bureaucracies around here but CONGRESS makes sure the overwhelming majority of federal jobs get distributed to districts all over the country.

[DustyMoment]

The Dallas-Fort Worth tollway (now I-30) eventually became free once the bonds were paid off, after a fight over extending the tolls, if I remember correctly.

You remember it correctly. But the fight was extensive and the state had to threaten the DFW toll authority with a suit before they finally abandoned the tollway. I was living in the area at the time.

However, the DFW tollway is the exception, not the rule. For the rule, look at the Dallas North tollway which has been around since Jesus was in elementary school and has little likelihood of EVER going bye-bye.

[muawiyah]

Indiana is crisscrossed with thousands of miles of roads called 'pike' ~ because they used to be tollroads.

You all remember when Obama said the business people didn't build the roads they use, right? He was totally wrong ~ might be the case that the federal government built the roads in Hawaii, but private interests built virtually all the early roads in the Midwest ~ the government had nothing to do with it.

A concept called 'demurrage' is commonly understood as an extra fee for detaining a box car on a rail siding ~ but it's more easily understood as a toll for directing a box car from it's normal regulated freight track to a privately owned siding. Just in case someone is going to tell me the railroads don't charge tolls ~ but, of course they do.

Toll roads ~ steel, corduroy, brick and gravel BUILT AMERICA, and for the most part, most of the toll roads were paid for.

[wolfman23601]

The existing road is 4 lanes, but it is not divided. Makes no difference in the argument, just making the correction. Other than the 3 towns it goes through (Ivor, Wakefield, and Waverly), which are 1-2 stop light twons, it is 55 MPH throughout the 55 mile stretch and there are no current traffic congestion issues. The road isn’t needed. I drive the section from Ivor to Petersburg often as I live in Newport News and have family near Petersburg. It will be a cold day in hell before I take the toll road.

[muawiyah]

There’s gotta’ be a reason why it is so lightly used ~ the alternative is just nasty all the time. So, what is it ~ the way it hooks up perhaps? Or, is there a chance of getting shot.(NOTE: i did a Google Earth look at the roadway ~ there’s plenty of it DIVIDED ~ not the whole thing, but take a good look sometime ~ there have been improvements.

[wolfman23601]

It is lightly used because:

1. It is 20 miles in each direction out of the way from Virginia Beach.

2. It really isn’t much better than the alternative. The alternative involves the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel. With 460 you can pick your poison with the Downtown Tunnel and the High Rise Bridge, both equally as time consuming as the HRBT.

3. Adding a toll road isn’t going to make it any more palatable.

4. The true pusher of this road is the Port of Virginia. It is not really designed to relieve congestion, it is designed for developers like everything else. If they really wanted to relieve congetion, they would sink a tunnel and provide rail/highway service betweeen Downtown Newport News and the Norfolk Naval Base with a spur into Portsmouth, but since all those areas are already developed, the business lobby isn’t interested.

[muawiyah]

One of the worst mistakes ever made was turning down the offer made by the trucking industry to purchase Shirley highway. We really needed a roadway to separate the trucks from the cars ~ and now we have a mixed use roadway that moves as fast as the heaviest most underpowered truck at rush hour.