A history of roads in Virginia: New directions

Traffic volumes on Virginia highways continued to climb in the 1970s and ‘80s. Congestion led to  creation of HOV lanes (right).

Still concerned about a rapidly growing backlog of highway, bridge, and public transit needs, the 1982 General Assembly provided a substantial increase in funds to shore up the state’s lagging transportation budget.

In doing so, the legislature averted a revenue crisis of major proportions that had threatened to bring the state’s highway system improvements to an abrupt halt.

By enacting a 3 percent oil excise tax, plus increases in motor vehicle registration and several other highway-user fees, the legislature authorized an estimated $263 million in additional money — $224 million for highway and bridge construction and reconstruction and $39 million to assist local public transportation systems with capital and administrative costs.

The new funds enabled the state to move forward with transportation improvements that otherwise would have been deferred indefinitely or, in some instances, abandoned entirely.

Out of the revenue collected for highway use, maintenance of the existing roads was paid first, as mandated by the General Assembly in 1977. This meant that a loss of funds had to be absorbed by the construction program. Escalating maintenance costs and the sagging highway budget left several districts’ construction programs in danger of collapse. Though lawmakers repeatedly tried to deal with the problem by increasing gas taxes, falling sales left only a string of broken promises to build new or expanded roads.

The answer to the transportation crisis of the mid-1980s clearly was to find a new and stable revenue source. Some thought that explosive growth in areas like Northern Virginia and Tidewater made the “pay-as-you-go” method of financing highway construction projects obsolete; urbanization had occurred too quickly for road construction to keep pace, particularly in light of the revenue decline and increased costs seen throughout the ‘70s.

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Virginia Department of Transportation
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1401 E. Broad Street
Richmond, VA 23219
VirginiaDOT.org