Tackling congestion requires balanced strategies
Like economics, effective transportation management requires a juggling of supply and demand. The intent is to find a balanced reciprocal relationship. Provide enough supply to meet demand and automobiles will travel congestion-free at reasonable and safe speeds.
Writing that sentence is easier than pulling it off. Agreement on the intended purpose is equaled by disagreement over the best way to achieve the desired outcome.
With the increasing popularity of the automobile in the mid-20th century and the advent of the interstate era, highway engineers focused on supply side solutions: pave and widen existing roads, and build national networks of new ones.
Land was purchased and trees were knocked down to build roads through greenfields, across valleys, over and under rivers and across and through mountains. As cities emptied into suburbs, shopping centers and malls sprouted. As supply — highways — grew, lanes filled up and people cried out for more. More lanes, more roads.
But in time the celebration of new roads started to be replaced with concern over the aftereffects: sprawl, hollowed out cities, disappearing local businesses and divided neighborhoods that too often affected minority and economically disadvantaged people.
And in spite of the new and wider roads, congestion persisted. The reciprocal relationship was unraveling. The debate between moving people rather than cars was taking center stage. Rightly so.
Even the stubborn among us learned to do better, sometimes through willful steps and often with legislative nudges. One of the brighter outcomes was a closer working relationship between highway and transit agencies, and regional and local governments and the people they serve.
For Hampton Roads, a diverse and multi-jurisdictional approach has paid off.
Dedicated funding was put in place to expand transit routes and decrease wait times between buses. A third Amtrak train was added with round-trip service to Washington, D.C., and connections to the Northeast Corridor.
The Hampton Roads Express Lane Network between Bowers Hill on the southside and Denbigh Boulevard on the Peninsula is being put in place to improve mobility on existing roadways by giving drivers the option to pay to use the express lanes, carpool in express lanes for free or continue to drive free in the general purpose lanes. The network will include express lanes on the High Rise Bridge and the expanded Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel.
The September 2021 Interstate 64/ 664 Corridor Improvement
Plan is a comprehensive look at more operational, transit and capital investments considered to make travel safer and more reliable. The plan includes adding cameras to detect and manage incidents that cause delay, buying new equipment for the Safety Service Patrols and expanding existing park-and-ride lots to handle more commuters.
Before recommending potentially higher cost capital improvements, consideration of lower-impact operational and transit improvements is now built into VDOT’s planning process.
While the use of demand strategies has grown and become somewhat routine, there are times when a supply side solution comes out on top. That’s the case with closing the 29-mile
gap on I-64 between Lightfoot and Bottoms Bridge near Richmond. I-64 is more than an urban highway. In its own right I-64 is an economic generator linking Hampton Roads to the critical Interstate 95 corridor.
Between 2017 and 2021, four sections of I-64 were widened from four to six lanes. The 29-mile gap hobbles not just automobiles, but also the safe and efficient movement of commercial and military traffic. The gap can be closed by adding one lane in each direction in the median without requiring new right-ofway.
Closing the gap is an important common sense solution for both the short and long term. Should there be a need to consider future improvements, a continuous six-lane I-64 sets up the possibility of expanding the Hampton Roads Express Lane network to Richmond.
The best way to assure a balance of supply and demand in the transportation network is by continuing a healthy and authentic collaboration between government agencies and communities, and by recognizing that reasonable methods to prevent and confront congestion do not fit into only one basket.