THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 4, 1994 TAG: 9408040611
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY STEPHEN C. FEHR, WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
The Howlett family of Falls Church, Va., has visited North Carolina's Outer Banks seven times but the trip last Saturday was the worst. What should have been a five-hour, 285-mile trip from Washington took seven hours and 15 minutes.
``Once we got to Route 168, it was bumper to bumper all the way,'' Albert Howlett said Wednesday from a beach house near Duck, N.C. ``We wish we had left earlier.''
Washington area residents are largely to blame for what Chesapeake, Va., City Council members say is an escalating crisis of traffic backups between their city, south of Norfolk, and the Outer Banks, a chain of long, narrow, sandy islands along North Carolina's coast.
About eight of every 10 beachgoers is from Virginia, and most of those are from Northern Virginia, according to the Outer Banks Chamber of Commerce. As construction of beach houses has exploded in recent years and more Virginians have discovered the Outer Banks, the traffic has overloaded about 80 miles of local roads, from Chesapeake to the beach.
Seeking to cut down on the time it takes to travel to the Outer Banks, Virginia and North Carolina officials are asking the federal government to help build a toll road linking Chesapeake with the North Carolina beaches.
The $1-a-car toll road would alleviate an expected bottleneck between Interstate 64 in Chesapeake and the North Carolina state line.
The only direct road between Chesapeake and the coastal area of North Carolina was built to carry about 7,500 cars a day. On a busy Saturday - the day when most beach rental property turns over -the road carries as many as 28,000 cars.
It's no wonder that two teenagers are selling $2 bootleg maps for the first time this summer advertising a back-roads route to the beach.
``Dozens of people were buying them,'' Howlett said.
Especially on summer weekends, the most congested stretch of road is a 40-mile stretch between I-64 and Barco, N.C., parts of which are one lane in each direction. Traffic slows or stops almost as soon as drivers get off I-64 onto Route 168 (Battlefield Boulevard).
``The tourist traffic has effectively taken this local road away from Chesapeake residents,'' said Mary Anne Saunders, an assistant to City Manager James W. Rein.
Beginning next year, North Carolina will widen its part of Route 168 between the Virginia border and Barco, leaving two lanes in each direction on Routes 168 and 158 to the beach. By 1998, North Carolina officials hope to begin construction of a 10-mile bridge across the Currituck Sound to link the fast-growing Corolla area with an undetermined point on the mainland.
Although the road widening will help ease congestion in North Carolina, the project will create a severe bottleneck in Virginia, from the state line to the southern end of the Great Bridge Bypass, a 10-mile stretch where Route 168 will remain only one lane in each direction.
Chesapeake officials are initiating the request for the federal money to build a $113 million road parallel to Route 168 that would carry traffic between the Great Bridge Bypass and the North Carolina line.
The U.S. House has authorized $5 million in start-up costs for the road, but the Senate historically has balked at such ``demonstration'' projects. Virginia still could use some of its federal highway money for the project.
``Identifying the funding is going to be an issue,'' said Virginia Transportation Commissioner David R. Gehr.
Of the $113 million, about $20 million would be raised from tolls. Tolls are never popular with drivers, but officials believe most people would be willing to pay if they knew their trips to and from the beach could be shortened by an hour or more.
KEYWORDS: ROAD CONSTRUCTION
by CNB