Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel

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Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel

Carries	4 lanes of I-64/US 60
Crosses	Hampton Roads
Locale	Norfolk, Virginia to Hampton, Virginia
Maintained by	Virginia Department of Transportation
Design	Composite: Low-level Trestle, Parallel single-tube Tunnels, Manmade islands
Total length	3.5 miles (5.6 km)
Vertical clearance	14'6"/4.42m (eastbound) 13'6"/4.11m (westbound)
Opening date	November 1, 1957

The Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel (HRBT) is the 3.5-mile-long (5.6 km) Hampton Roads crossing for Interstate 64 and U.S. Route 60. It is a four-lane facility comprised of bridges, trestles, man-made islands, and tunnels under the main shipping channels for Hampton Roads harbor in the southeastern portion of Virginia in the United States.

It connects the historic Phoebus area of the independent city of Hampton near Fort Monroe on the Virginia Peninsula with Willoughby Spit in the city of Norfolk in South Hampton Roads, and is part of the Hampton Roads Beltway.

1 History
2 Future plans
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

The HRBT has two 12-foot-wide (3.7 m) lanes each way, on separately built bridge-tunnel structures. The original two-lane structure replaced a ferry system and opened November 1, 1957 at a cost of $44 million dollars as a toll facility. The bridge-tunnel was originally signed as State Route 168 and U.S. Route 60. It later received the Interstate 64 designation, and, much later, SR 168 was truncated south of the crossing.

The construction of the original HRBT was funded with toll revenue bonds. The bonds were paid off before a second portion was opened in 1976.

The construction of the $95 million second portion of the HRBT was funded as part of the Interstate Highway System as authorized under the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, as a portion of I-64, which means that it was funded with 90% FHWA funds from the Highway Trust Fund and 10% state DOT funds. When the second span was opened to traffic, the tolls were removed from the earlier portion.

The I-64 HRBT has two man-made tunnel portal islands, at the place where Hampton Roads flows into the Chesapeake Bay. The two man-made tunnel portal islands were widened to the west to accommodate the parallel bridge-tunnel project work accomplished between 1972 and 1976.

The Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel south portal island connects to preexisting land, about 20 acres (8 ha) of land that is the site of Fort Wool, a fort during the US Civil War, World War I and World War II, and a public park since 1970. Fort Wool is on a man-made island known as Rip Raps, created in 1818. There is a small earthen causeway that connects Fort Wool to the HRBT south portal island.

The current westbound tunnel is the original tunnel constructed in 1957 and has a lower clearance than the newer eastbound tube built in the 1970s--13'6" (4.1 m) as opposed to 14'6" (4.4 m). There have been several accidents and at least one fatality arising from this anomaly. Special over-height detectors have been installed near the Willoughby Spit end to help prevent future incidents.

Given its proximity to the U.S. Navy's Atlantic Fleet home base at Naval Station Norfolk, many nearby shipyards and critical port facilities, the HRBT design incorporates a tunnel instead of a more cost effective drawbridge. A bridge-tunnel, if destroyed in wartime or due to natural disaster, would not block the vital shipping channels.

Another four-lane facility, the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel (MMMBT) was completed in 1992. The MMMBT provided a second bridge-tunnel crossing of the Hampton Roads harbor, supplementing the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel and providing some traffic relief. The MMMBT also forms part of the Hampton Roads Beltway, and is also toll-free. Unfortunately, in the intervening years since the MMMBT’s construction, the traffic volume in the Hampton Roads region has grown so much that HRBT is again the subject of frequent, sometimes constant, traffic delays and quite often operates well above its designed capacity, particularly during the height of the summer tourist season.

[edit] Future plans

According to VDOT, in 1958, an average of 6,000 vehicles a day used the facility. Today, an average of 88,000 vehicles a day use the crossing, with volumes exceeding 100,000 during the tourist season. ^[1]

A long range plan to be funded by the Hampton Roads Transportation Authority (HRTA) would add more lanes to portions of the other bridge-tunnel, the MMMBT (on the western part of the Beltway), and provide direct new access to Norfolk, effectively providing a "third crossing" of Hampton Roads.

Some critics of that plan are concerned that the plan may provide little relief to the HRBT. However, as the HRBT has longest tunnel sections, adding additional capacity with new tub(es) would be more costly than many alternatives. Possible solutions suggested to relieve the HRBT include variable tolls to be highest during peak periods, to encourage motorists to select alternate routes or times of day. Enhanced mass transit services may also provide more affordable relief.