Interstate 81 (VA)

Background

Interstate 81 is one of the primary transportation routes connecting the busy Northeast to the mid-South, stretching from Tennessee to New York. Virginia has the largest segment of the interstate - 325 miles reaching from Bristol to Winchester.

Traffic along I-81 has increased dramatically in recent years, particularly tractor-trailer traffic. The Virginia Department of Transportation is considering ways to accommodate this increased traffic. Much of the focus has been on a proposal from a private consortium known as STAR Solutions to add two lanes each way along the entire length of I-81 in Virginia, rebuild over 80 interchanges, and convert the highway to a toll road. The project would dramatically alter the region’s rural and historic landscape, increase air and water pollution, and cost taxpayers upwards of $13 billion.

Vigorous opposition by SELC, numerous state leaders, other groups, and thousands of citizens helped convince VDOT and the Commonwealth Transportation Board to reject the STAR proposal. Unfortunately, VDOT’s plan, approved in June 2007 by the federal government, is not much better – it is almost equally costly and destructive.

The plan fails to take a measured, phased approach to improving I-81, and instead jumps almost directly to expanding I-81 to six lanes, and in most cases eight lanes, and possibly building new highway segments around Harrisonburg and Wytheville.

Instead, steps such as increasing freight-rail capacity along the corridor and making targeted improvements to the highway to address safety problems would result in greater benefits at far less cost and environmental damage.

VDOT’s study does at least mention key elements of the Commonwealth Transportation Board’s resolution for improving I-81, which SELC is working to promote, including:

The immediate need to improve safety "hot spots";
Short-term rail improvements to divert additional trucks;
Consideration of context sensitive solutions in developing improvements;
The current study of potential multi-state rail improvements.

However, it does not put the same priority on a number of these steps and significantly alters some steps. The plan contains numerous other flaws that still need to be addressed:

It slights many of the most effective safety measures, such as increased enforcement of speed limits.
Because it fails to distinguish between local and through traffic, it misses the benefit of traffic-reducing measures like improving local street networks in urban and urbanizing areas to get local drivers off the interstate.
It fails to link transportation and land use planning.
It underestimates the environmental damage that would result from widening I-81, including impacts on Civil War battlefields, water quality and air quality, and, if tolls are imposed, the impacts on communities that would experience increased truck traffic from drivers trying to avoid the tolls.

The STAR proposal was one of many projects submitted under Virginia's 1995 Public-Private Transportation Act in recent years. The law allows VDOT to contract with the private sector to fund part or all of the costs of new highways. In 2005, SELC released the first comprehensive analysis of the law, concluding that it is dramatically flawed.

For example, private corporations can pay all or most of the cost of building a highway, recoup their investment and make a profit by collecting tolls, yet sidestep the state’s normal transportation planning and public input processes. Due to the years spent reviewing the STAR proposal, much-needed improvements to I-81 were delayed, highlighting the need to reform the Public-Private Transportation Act. Our report makes several recommendations to improve the law.