Roanoke Times: Time to Change I-81 Approach
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
©The Roanoke Times
Time to change I-81 approach
By John D. Hutchinson
Hutchinson is a certified land-use planner in Staunton and a planning consultant for the Shenandoah Valley Network.
After a string of recent accidents in the Shenandoah Valley, truck traffic on Interstate 81 has been headline news throughout the corridor. The Roanoke Times ran an Aug. 1 Washington Post article ("On accident-plagued Interstate 81 in Va., fear becomes a traveling companion") that described the dangers posed by tractor-trailers. I-81 serves as a link in the NAFTA highway, a freight corridor that reaches from New York to Texas, and long-haul trucks make up an increasing share of the traffic.
While I-81 is not the most dangerous interstate in Virginia -- nor is it near the top of the list -- it does have several trouble spots that, if addressed, would dramatically increase safety on the roadway. This modest approach, along with the shift of freight from trucks to rail, would go far toward addressing the I-81 challenge.
However, in 2007 the Virginia Department of Transportation finalized a massive $11.4 billion plan to widen all 325 miles of the interstate, most of it with two additional lanes each direction and some of it as wide as 12 lanes, despite the fact that VDOT received a record-breaking number of public comments opposing wholesale widening.
It is important to put the $11.4 billion price tag into perspective. Drivers across the state are familiar with the well-known mega-projects in northern Virginia: the Springfield Mixing Bowl, the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, the I-395/I-495 HOT lanes, the Dulles Metrorail extension and others.
VDOT plans to make I-81 wider than the Capital Beltway at a cost greater than all of these projects combined.
Fortunately, there are viable alternatives, some of which are already under way. Primary among these is rail.
Norfolk Southern is two years into a $3 billion rail upgrade along what it calls the Crescent Corridor -- centered on I-81 -- from New York to Texas that will divert more than 1 million trucks to rail each year, including up to 25 percent of the trucks on I-81 in Virginia.
Public investment will be needed to complete this project, but dramatically less than the $11.4 billion that would be needed to widen the interstate. Rail is not only cost-effective. It moves more freight using less gas and with lower carbon emissions.
Speaking to a group of Virginia business leaders in 2007, Norfolk Southern CEO Wick Moorman summed up the case, saying, "It's a lot easier and a lot faster to tack on another track to a railroad than to add another lane to a highway. ... If there is a good solution that costs between $2 billion and $3 billion and takes a few years and an $11 billion solution that takes a lot longer, then maybe reason prevails at the end of the day."
In addition, traffic rates and death rates on I-81 have been on the decline since 2004; stepped up law enforcement has been proven to work, and improving local road networks -- a much less expensive option than massive widening -- will reduce local traffic on the interstate.
VDOT claims there is no money to accomplish its grandiose plan for I-81. That may be true -- for now. But that plan, which has been approved by the Federal Highway Administration, will direct VDOT's work on I-81 as money does become available. Indeed, the plan is already being implemented along segments of the interstate in Rockbridge, Montgomery and Wythe counties.
Virginia's next governor will be in a position to put a halt to this fiscal and economic irresponsibility.
As Virginians ponder how best to spend scarce transportation dollars, we should ask our candidates if they are willing to commit to improving the plan for the I-81 corridor -- focusing on the interstate's safety trouble spots, and working with Norfolk Southern on its effort to shift freight from road to rail.
Usually policymakers are presented with a thorny choice: either the low-cost option or the environmentally friendly one. In today's ongoing transportation debate, we finally have an alternative that is both. It would be hard to fathom Virginia's next governor not taking it.
A similar editorial by John Hutchinson appeared in the Staunton News Leader on August 23, 2009 and in the Northern Virginia Daily on August 28, 2009.
Links Referenced
- View Original Article
- http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/216502
- Staunton News Leader
- http://www.newsleader.com/article/20090823/OPINION02/908230332/Virginia-needs-a-better-plan-for-I-81-traffic
- Northern Virginia Daily
- http://www.nvdaily.com/opinion/2009/08/a-better-i-81-plan.html
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