Virginia Goes Mobile

Virginia seeks inventive solutions to road building and optimal traffic flow.

Faced with ever-increasing car and truck traffic but never-enough dollars for construction and maintenance, the Virginia Department of Transportation is looking toward new ways to keep traffic flowing.

 “If I were capturing it today, you wouldn’t call us a transportation department; you would call us a mobility company,” says VDOT Commissioner David S. Ekern, , who joined the Virginia agency in September. “That’s the journey we are on. That’s where we are headed in the big picture.”

Within the next decade, Ekern envisions VDOT will become a smaller agency and operate more like a 21st Century multifaceted business, utilizing private investment and putting an organization in place to run an agency with employees who will develop skills such as contract management. The agency will also harness technology to “ring more out of the system,” Ekern adds.

Mal Kerley, PE, chief engineer for the VDOT, says everything the agency is doing is innovative. “Today, the engineering is the easy part,” he adds. “The difficult part is coming up with the finances to do it, dealing with the environmental concerns and having public involvement.”

Since the Virginia Legislature passed the Public-Private Transportation Act in 1995, VDOT has completed five public-private projects, including improvements to Route 28 and the Pocahontas Parkway in the Richmond area and to the Jamestown Corridor, Route 199, which is used by tourists to visit historic Jamestown.   “They would not have been built in the same time if we had gone through the regular process of allocations from the general assembly,” says Dusty Holcombe, assistant director of the VDOT Innovative Project Delivery program. “The ability to bring private equity investment into the process has helped us develop those roadways and transportation facilities well ahead of their scheduled time.”

A special local government commercial taxing district funded 75 percent of the $320 million improvements to Route 28 in northern Virginia. Clark/Shirley, a joint venture of Clark Construction Group LLC of Bethesda, Md., and Shirley Contracting Company LLC of Lorton, Va., received the design-build contract in 2002 and began working on six of the 10 interchanges needed to convert the route to a limited-access highway. Those six interchanges are complete, and Holcombe anticipates a 2009 completion of the remaining four.

Connie Sorrell, chief of systems operations for VDOT, says that to improve the flow on existing roadways, the agency is using electronic communication to notify drivers on their hand-held devices and cell phones about crashes or delays on the corridors they request.

Sorrell says the agency is considering additional deployment of variable signs and installing Webcams so people can check their routes online before getting in their cars. An adaptive signal system helps keep traffic flowing in northern Virginia.

 “The key to efficient operations is delaying at what point you need a major capacity improvement,” Sorrell adds. “It’s not going to take the place of all of the increased demand, but it, certainly, can help manage that demand.”

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Traditional Projects Under Way

Tidewater Skanska Inc. of Virginia Beach, Va., continues to work on Virginia’s portion of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, a $2.56 billion dual-span drawbridge on Interstate 95. VDOT shares financial responsibility for the replacement bridge with Maryland, the District of Columbia and the Federal Highway Administration.

Virginia’s portion, which includes the U.S. Route 1 Interchange, began at $1.62 billion, and now, after material cost increases and refinements to the plan, is pegged at $1.95 million. 

Kerley says the $676 million Springfield Interchange on I-95 will open late this year. Archer Western Contractors Ltd. of Sandston, Va., is working on the final $100 million phase. Clark/Shirley, Tidewater Skanska and R.R. Dawson Bridge Co. of Lexington, Ky., completed other phases of the work.

In Portsmouth, Va., Tidewater Skanska is building the $153 million Pinners Point Connector, a new four-lane road from the Western Freeway (VA-164) to the Portsmouth Marine Terminal, the Martin Luther King Expressway and the Midtown Tunnel. The project includes six bridges over land and water. 

Kerley says he expects Tidewater Skanska to complete the $89 million, bascule West Point Eltham Bridge, spanning the Pamunkey River, later this year. The 5,600-ft-long bridge will have four lanes and a shoulder for bicycle traffic. McLean Contracting of Glen Burnie, Md., and Bryant Contracting of Toano, Va., a joint venture, completed the first $37.6 million span last year.

E.V. Williams Inc. of Virginia Beach should complete a $98.6 million Interstate 64 widening and Battlefield Boulevard Interchange replacement project in Chesapeake in July 2009. The project includes four new lanes in each direction and five new bridges.

Private Partnerships in the Works

VDOT is negotiating with Fluor/Transurban, a joint venture of Fluor Enterprises Inc. of Aliso Viejo, Calif., and Transurban of Melbourne, Australia, to design, build, finance and operate 12 mi of four high-occupancy toll lanes on Interstate 495, the Capital Beltway.

The HOT lanes will allow free use to buses and three-person or more carpools and assess electronic tolls for other vehicles. Holcombe says construction on the $1.2 billion project should begin in late 2007 or early 2008, with completion expected three to four years later.

A similar $1 billion project on I-95/395, from Arlington to Fredericksburg, will add HOT lanes in two phases. Fluor/Transurban entered into an agreement last fall to begin preliminary engineering work, as well as detailed design and feasibility studies.

Holcombe expects construction to begin on the first northern 28-mi phase in 2008.
VDOT is developing an expansion of the Midtown Tunnel in the High Roads area, between Portsmouth and Norfolk. Tidewater Skanska, Jacobs Civil Inc. of Arlington, Va., and Parsons Transportation Group of Washington, D.C., have submitted statements of interest in partnering with VDOT on the project.

The agency is completing an Interstate Justification Report and environmental review to better define the project’s scope before requesting proposals sometime this year.  
VDOT plans operational improvements along a 325-mi stretch of U.S. Route 81, adding truck acceleration and deceleration lanes. STAR Solutions of Richmond proposed designing and building the $141 million in truck lanes. STAR Solutions is a consortium of Virginia and international engineering, construction and finance companies, including KBR of Houston. VDOT is now negotiating with KBR.

Holcombe says he hopes construction will start on one of the truck lanes in 2008.
The agency is partnering with coal companies in western Virginia to build the 51-mi Coalfields Expressway in the Bristol area. Two coal companies are conducting limited feasibility studies now.

 “We will use the harvesting of the coal to try to offset the cost of the roadway,” Holcombe says. “The project is not focused on increasing capacity but on increasing economic development in a community that really needs it.”

Three teams submitted conceptual proposals for the 56-mi, $1.1 billion U.S. Route 460 corridor improvements project. They include Virginia Corridor Partners, a team made up of the Australia-headquartered Macquarie Group and Skanska Infrastructure Development of Alexandria, Va.; Itinere of Spain; and Cintra USA Corp. of Spain.

Holcombe expects to complete an agreement with one of the entities by late 2008 and for construction to start in 2009 or 2010. 

“Our three major challenges are funding, funding and funding,” Kerley says. “Those are things everyone is challenged with now, especially with the escalation of costs and our system getting old. The interstate system is 50 years old.”

Useful Sources:

Pinners Point Interchange
http://www.usacivil.skanska.com/skanska/templates/page____541.aspx

Pamunkey River Bridge
http://www.usacivil.skanska.com/skanska/templates/page____517.aspx

Springfield Interchange
http://www.springfieldinterchange.com/

I-64 Battlefield Boulevard Project
http://www.i64info.com/

I-81/ HIGHWAY 81
http://www.improve81.com/