No sleep lost over I-81 lane idea flop

Shed no tears, please, over the final demise of a plan to transform Interstate 81 into a massive, eight-lane scar on Virginia’s landscape.

The public-private widening plan had been limping along in scaled-back form since late 2006. State transportation officials pulled the plug Wednesday.

This provides an opportunity to start again and pursue a better solution to the interstate’s crowding and safety problems. Such a solution will almost certainly involve a blend of road improvements and increased utilization of freight rail. State leaders need to explore and fund this alternative.

The state started kicking around plans to improve the interstate several years ago. The highway is crowded and carries a far greater load of tractor-trailers than it was designed to handle – about 5 million a year. The result is a white-knuckled ride in which cars must jockey for position among the big rigs.

The problem is obvious, but an agreeable solution has been elusive.

In 2004, the Department of Transportation entered into an agreement with STAR Solutions – a road-building consortium that included Kellogg, Brown & Root (now KBR Inc.) – to use the highway as a pilot project to test the concept of adding separate truck lanes to existing interstates.

The STAR proposal involved spending $13 billion to widen the road to eight lanes from Bristol to Winchester. Tolls and federal highway pork were expected to pay for most of it.

Opposition was swift and broad. Opponents included environmental groups, historic preservationists, rail proponents, local governments and private citizens.

The project might have moved forward in spite of the opposition, but there were funding problems, as well. The bulk of the federal money didn’t materialize and the state’s highway repair and construction budget remains perpetually underfunded.

The final straw came when KBR, formerly a subsidiary of Halliburton until KBR’s recent restructuring and public offering, pulled out of the STAR consortium in December. KBR officials blamed a corporate restructuring, but the nature of KBR’s no-bid contract to build truck climbing lanes was under scrutiny.

With KBR’s departure, the STAR plan is dead. Transportation officials shouldn’t look to resurrect it, but they must move forward with more than $700 million in urgently needed safety improvements. The state first identified these problems a decade ago.

State and federal funding is available for some of this work, but it isn’t clear that it will be enough to make all the upgrades, given the increase in construction material costs in the past year. If more funds are needed, state lawmakers should provide them. I-81 improvements shouldn’t be slighted because of the legislature’s focus on road work in Northern Virginia and its aversion to a gas tax increase to pay for construction and repairs.

Virginia needs a predictable and dedicated source of income to keep its roads in acceptable condition.

Meanwhile, as the state prepares to fix obvious safety flaws, it also must work with Norfolk Southern, which is proposing rail corridor upgrades that it says could divert 1 million trucks a year from I-81 – although that total is for the length of the interstate, not just the Virginia portion.

Given rising fuel costs and environmental concerns about greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles, it makes sense to pursue a rail alternative. It might even make sense for Virginia to invest in this project with Norfolk Southern, although further investigation is needed to determine if such a move would serve the public interest.

The end of the STAR Solutions project should not be the end of work on this vital highway.