VDOT says many planned projects won’t happen

Virginia has almost no money to start new highway projects, according to state transportation officials.

The Virginia Department of Transportation released a list yesterday of almost 200 construction projects that will be delayed or dropped from consideration in the state’s proposed $7.9-billion six-year transportation program.

“Those projects have no foreseeable funding sources for the next six years,” state Transportation Secretary Pierce R. Homer said of the works left out of the 2009-2014 building program.

“We are unable to initiate major new projects throughout the commonwealth simply due to the lack of funding,” Homer said.

The General Assembly will meet June 23 to try again to come up with a solution for the state’s increasingly oppressive urban congestion and rural access problems.

Among the central Virginia projects dropped are interstate-highway interchange improvements in the cities of Richmond and Petersburg and the counties of Goochland, Hanover and New Kent. Also left out are a slew of major bridge rehabilitations, including Interstate 64’s Shockoe Valley bridges in Richmond.

An expected $1.1-billion decline in state transportation revenue for 2009-2014 prompted the rollbacks. Federal road funds are also becoming scarcer.

Richmond-area drivers will get one break under the proposed plan: VDOT wants to fast-track the $40-million repair job on washboardlike I-64 between the Bryan Park interchange and Parham Road this year.

Also included in the proposed six-year plan are the Huguenot Bridge reconstruction in Richmond and the U.S. 360 widening project in Mechanicsville.

“We’re pursuing putting money on projects that we could actually get done in the next few years,” said Gerald P. McCarthy, the Richmond district representative on the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

The proposed six-year plan also will delay the start of construction on the I-295 Meadowville Interchange in Chesterfield, improvements to the U.S 1-state Route 54 junction in Ashland, work on the Boulevard-Dupuy Avenue intersection in Colonial Heights, widening Cedar Level Road in Hopewell, and rebuilding Squirrel Level Road in Petersburg.

“It’s all painful,” McCarthy said. “If we had the money, we would be doing these projects.”