State Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne looked out at his audience on Monday morning and stressed what should be obvious but which perhaps needed to be restated for this crowd.
In attendance at the Hampton Roads Convention Center were more than 300 contractors and developers interested in submitting bids to work on the massive plan to widen Interstate 64 between Norfolk and Hampton and add three lanes to the existing Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel.
“We’re not wasting your time, guys,” Layne told the attendees. “This project is going to get built. We’re taking some time to figure it out, but it’s going to get done. We’re not here talking about something that may or may not happen.”
Layne said that after a decade of discussion about a “third crossing” that never materialized and after many South Hampton Roads residents complained about being “caught off-guard” by well-publicized changes at their tunnels, he and Virginia Department of Transportation commissioner Charlie Kilpatrick felt it best to be clear and open about the HRBT project.
To that end, Layne promised “tons of public meetings” regarding the project, which is budgeted at $3.5 billion to $4 billion. Kilpatrick said the schedule calls for proposals to be accepted next year and contracts awarded in 2019.
“We will be very deliberate and very methodical,” he said, “but we want to make clear that we do have the funding.”
The project will widen a 12-mile stretch of I-64 and expand the HRBT from four lanes to seven. Layne and Kilpatrick said that when the expansion is complete, four of the tunnel lanes will be free and three will be “HOT lanes,” which will be free to vehicles with two or more occupants but tolled for individual motorists. The tolls will be dynamic, changing based on time of day and traffic patterns.
The crowd gathered in Hampton on Monday morning included potential bidders who had flown in from Spain, France and the Netherlands, as well as companies from six other nations with local offices.
Garrett Moore, VDOT’s chief engineer, was one of several speakers to address the room after Layne and Kilpatrick. He stressed that the project team would be open-minded in considering bids to work on the expansion.
“If someone has innovative ideas, we’re ready to listen,” he said. “We will consider innovation over marginal cost savings. This is going to be underwater for a long, long time, and we want to get it right in the long term.”
Layne described it as one of the biggest current projects in the nation and said he saw it fitting into President Donald Trump’s repeated call for large-scale infrastructure upgrades.
“This has been a long time coming, but our elected leaders came together and selected this,” he said. “That’s so important. I’d rather have an engineering issue than a political issue because I know an engineering issue will get solved. The political ones don’t always get solved. That’s why it is so good to have everyone on board with this across the region.”
Holtzclaw can be reached by phone at 757-928-6479.
