Virginia faces $1.7 billion gap in highway funding (copy)
Virginia is facing a gap of more than $1.7 billion between available funds and what it needs to spend on maintaining highways to keep them safe and in relatively good condition over the next six years, the state’s top transportation officials say.
The reason is a decision last year to shift money from maintenance work to construction projects, even though maintenance costs have roughly doubled in the past decade.
Formally speaking, the cut was in sums that had been transferred from the highway construction budget to the maintenance budget, reducing that transfer from $300 million a year to $100 million.
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But state law says maintenance spending comes first, and that means some of the things the Virginia Department of Transportation had hoped to do, like a $60 million, six-year program to reduce pedestrian deaths by improving pedestrian crossings, might not be possible, Secretary of Transportation Nick M. Donohue said.
It also likely means deep cuts — on the order of 60% — in the money available for the regional transportation priorities that localities identify in the Smart Scale allocation process.
“This is not a fun conversation, but it is a necessary conversation … I want to be clear: there's no mitigation strategy that makes this not painful,” Donohue told the Commonwealth Transportation Board, the body that oversees planning and funding transportation projects.
The problem goes back to a board decision last year to reduce transfers from construction budgets to maintenance.
“I think at that time it was kind of described as it might be nice to paint your house every six years, but sometimes patching will do that, and you know a little chipped paint can be okay,” Donohue said. “But I think from my perspective … we're in a situation where this would be well beyond chipped paint.”
Donohue said that if the board in January 2025 had not cut $200 million a year from the funds transferred to maintenance from this fiscal year going forward, and then committed that money to various construction projects, VDOT could have managed the rising costs of maintenance work.
The previous administration of then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin also boosted construction commitments last October when the board decided to spend $715 million from bond sales and special funds on several construction projects they deemed priorities, including work on the shoulder of southbound Route 288 in Goochland County, the planned Gayton Road interchange on Interstate 64 and work on East Parham Road and the roads around the Port of Richmond.
Donohue said the state is going to look at every way it can ease the pain, including looking at the timing of when construction work is done or redesigning projects or selling bonds, with the aim of boosting spending in paving and related maintenance work by $290 million from fiscal year 2028 through 2033. Roughly $240 million of that is for state projects, and $50 million is state support for local projects.
“We can't really be talking about scaling back much and maintaining the paving standard,” Donohue said, noting that many of the less-traveled roads VDOT is responsible for are already at a Paving Condition Index rating of 60%, which means they’re in fair condition, with cracking, weathering and patching that suggest they’re on the verge of needing major work.
Deputy transportation secretary Laura Schewel told the board that VDOT isn’t recommending changing this year’s paving budget.
“That means that will be a hit in what we can do, but we can recover from that,” she said. “But as we’ve all seen … pavement costs are growing.”
Read the report: Pavement and Bridge Funding Recommendations
Dave Ress (804) 649-6948
