First-Time Tolls Slashed for Tunnels to Va. Port

This story appears in the Jan. 27 print edition of Transport Topics.

Newly elected Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) announced a nearly 50% reduction in the tolls that will be charged for the first time, starting Feb. 1, at two tunnels leading into the East Coast’s third-largest port.

Truckers traveling to and from the Port of Virginia were facing tolls of almost $15 for a round trip during peak hours. Instead, the toll for trucks with three or more axles will be $4 each way during peak traffic hours and $2.25 each way for off-peak trips.

As many as 6,000 truck trips a day are made through the Midtown-Downtown tunnels that connect Norfolk and Portsmouth, according to Elizabeth River Crossings, the development consortium that manages the facilities and will collect the tolls intended to help finance a third tunnel.

The port said last week that, in 2013, it handled more cargo than at any other time in its history — 2.22 million twenty-foot equivalent units.

“This is a critical project that must be built to reduce congestion, improve safety and propel economic opportunities for the region,” McAuliffe said Jan. 15. “But we must execute it in a way that does not threaten business growth in the region.”

McAuliffe assumed office Jan. 11.

During his campaign, McAuliffe, said he would reduce the toll burden. Dale Bennett, president of the Virginia Trucking Association, praised the governor for keeping the promise.

“This is something that he talked about during the campaign for everybody, not just us,” Bennett said. “He talked about doing what he could to mitigate the harm that the level of the tolls was going to do to both the people that live down there and the businesses.”

On Jan. 21, the state Supreme Court said it will not reconsider its October ruling that tolling cars and trucks is legal, rejecting a challenge by local residents, truckers and business groups.

The two existing tunnels lying under the Elizabeth River have been toll-free for decades.

However, under former Gov. Bob McDonnell (R), a leading proponent of tolling and public-private partnerships, the state and a private development consortium agreed on a financing plan for a third tunnel to be paid for in part by tolling the existing tunnels.

Residents in the Hampton Roads area, along with the city of Portsmouth, trucking firms and other businesses filed suit last year to stop the tolls and nullify the public-private partnership agreement.

The plaintiffs argued the tolls were taxes and that state lawmakers had illegally surrendered the authority to tax by approving a 1996 law that allows governors and transportation officials to sign such agreements without legislative approval.

The plaintiffs’ hopes were buoyed in May when a Portsmouth Circuit Court judge ruled that the Legislature “has exceeded its power by ceding the setting of toll rates and taxes” to the Virginia Department of Transportation. In October, however, the Supreme Court overturned that ruling.

The key to lowering the tolls, Bennett said, was McAuliffe’s decision to find money with which to underwrite the reductions.

“Implementing the toll revision plan will cost the commonwealth $82.5 million,” the governor said in the announcement. “This will come from a combination of bonds and other funds that have not been assigned to specific transportation projects.”

Elizabeth River Crossings, a $2.1 billion public-private partnership, involves a development consortium that’s a joint venture between Skanska Infrastructure Development and the Macquarie Group Ltd.

Under the terms of the public-private partnership contract, Elizabeth River Crossings is to use the toll revenue to help pay for a tunnel alongside the existing Midtown Tunnel, which carries U.S. 58 traffic, and to rehabilitate the existing tunnel.

Elizabeth River Crossings is also to use the toll revenue to help rehabilitate the Downtown Tunnel, which carries Interstate 264 traffic, and extend the Martin Luther King Freeway in Portsmouth from London Boulevard to I-264.

The development agreement allows the consortium to collect the tolls for 58 years.