THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 3, 1995 TAG: 9512020010
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
Downtown Norfolk-Portsmouth Tunnel traffic was 22 percent higher this October than in October 1994, Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel traffic was 16.5 percent higher, and Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel traffic was up 11.2 percent.
The rising traffic levels, reported Wednesday by staff writer Mac Daniel, are cause for both celebration and concern.
The cause for concern is obvious. Commerce and tourism depend on free-flowing roads. Cargo that flows into Hampton Roads by ship or rail is too likely to bog down when transferred to trucks. A family of tourists stuck with crying kids in traffic is a family less likely to vacation here ever again. Furthermore, when commuters must allow extra traveling time for slow traffic, their quality of life erodes; when ambulances are slowed en route to hospitals, lives are endangered.
So where's the good news in the rising traffic figures? ``They show increasing interaction between both sides of Hampton Roads,'' said Art Collins, director of the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission. ``That's clearly a positive thing.'' They also show more traffic between Portsmouth and Norfolk, he said, and that, too, is positive.
More interaction between the north and south sides and between Norfolk and Portsmouth means a bigger market for all. Nauticus, for example, is well-served when the half-million Peninsula residents come more often to South Hampton Roads. Similarly, the Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton benefits when the million South Hampton Roads residents travel more routinely to the Peninsula.
The tunnel-traffic figures illustrate that though we are governed locally, in individual cities, we live regionally.
The rising figures add urgency to a Virginia Department of Transportation study of a possible ``third crossing'' between South Hampton Roads and the Peninsula.
``We can't wait till we have a crisis on our hands,'' Collins said, ``before we decide what we'll do about it.''
The VDOT study, more than a year from completion, is to determine the degree of need for a third crossing and whether another bridge-tunnel is environmentally and economically feasible. The need seems clear enough and is increasing, as the tunnels' figures show. The study also is to determine the best location of the third crossing and whether it should carry trains or vehicles or both.
Collins would like to see, as would we, a passenger train connecting South Hampton Roads and the Peninsula with downtown Richmond and downtown Washington, D.C. ``There is just so much area you can pour concrete on the Peninsula,'' Collins said, ``and on the south side, for that matter.'' Naturally more rail passengers would mean fewer cars.
To lessen congestion in the Downtown Tunnel, ride sharing and mass-transit use should be encouraged. (The ferry ride is wonderful!) Of course what every driver wants is for every other driver to take mass transit.
Whatever traffic-congestion solutions are arrived at, they should be arrived at as expeditiously as possible. If our roads become as clogged as Northern Virginia's, development will wither and everyday life will become all the more difficult. A prosperous future depends on an adequate transportation system. by CNB