As the summer travel season picks up, visitors will have a much different view — and some different routes — at the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel as a result of the ongoing expansion project.
Traffic counts at the primary route between the Peninsula and South Hampton Roads have grown steadily ever since it opened in the 1950s. In 2011, for example, the state transportation department reported that on a daily basis, more than 44,000 vehicles used the artery each way, and projected that number to rise to about 56,000 by 2040. Last year, according to the department, roughly 100,000 vehicles used it daily during the tourism season, which begins on Memorial Day weekend.
As the $4 billion project continues this summer, there will three primary traffic shifts that motorists will see, the two biggest of which will come in August. Early that month, motorists heading west on Interstate 64 between Willoughby Spit and the South Island and will be moved onto a temporary bridge to allow crews to demolish the existing bridge and continue construction of the new portion of the bridge, according to Ryan Banas, project director for the HRBT Expansion Project.
In late August, eastbound I-64 traffic from the South Island to Willoughby Spit will be shifted onto the new eight-lane bridge which will allow for the demolition of portions of the existing eastbound structure and continue. However, only two of the future eight lanes will be open to traffic, Banas said.
“We’ll only have two new lanes up there, it ultimately has the capacity for eight, but in our current staging of construction we’re only going to have two new lanes up on that bridge,” Banas said. “No additional capacity across the harbor until substantial completion, which for us is February 2027.”
However, he added, opening this portion of the bridge to traffic will offer a great deal of shoulder width which will allow for easier management of incidents such as accidents and breakdowns — and therefore lessen congestion.
“By having those shoulders it allows us to get them out of an active lane and keep traffic moving through on the existing lanes that we have,” Banas said. “I do think that will be very helpful for us in high volume situations where we don’t have to worry about someone breaking down because they’ve been sitting in traffic because of congestion, and then that breakdown can just lead to even more exacerbated delays.”
Starting around the end of this month, motorists on I-64 from Willoughby Spit down to Patrol Road will shift from the left edge of the eastbound roadway to the right edge, now only newly widened pavement, to allow crews to do more construction work in the median.
As for the project’s main feature, the new tunnels, the enormous tunnel drilling machine doing the bulk of the heavy lifting for the HRBT project, has completed 65% of the way through her second tunnel as of Friday. She’s expected to complete it by September, several weeks faster than she completed the first leg of her journey, according to Banas.
Gavin Stone, 757-712-4806, gavin.stone@virginiamedia.com