Plans to privatize I-81 in Virginia and build an eight-lane truck tollway through Civil War battlefields in the Shenandoah Valley and the mountains of Southwest Virginia were dealt a severe blow this week. KBR/Halliburton, along with a consortium of state and national contractors, financial institutions and lobbyists, called STAR Solutions (website just pulled from the internet), dropped their plans to build an 8-lane, tolled super-truckway. In 2002, STAR proposed building four exclusive truck lanes in the center of I-81, in a typical KBR/non competitive-bid business plan.
--cross posted to Daily Kos
KBR said they could get House Infrastructure and Transportation Chair Don Young (R-Alaska) to subsidize the $13 billion cost with an earmark. STAR had the cozy connections--Randy DeLay's (You Know Who's brother) Public/Private Strategies Inc. (too private to have a website) and <a href="http://www.mcguirewoods.com/">McGuire Woods</a>, the law firm that wrote the public-private partnership act in Virginia; its tell-all marketing slogan is, "Relationships that drive results". But citizens rose up to oppose the earmark and only 10% of the $1.6 billion KBR said it could get Young to fork over actually materialized.
Wednesday the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) announced that the public private partnership with KBR and friends was dead. <a href="http://www.railsolution.org">RAIL Solution</a>, a group of citizens in the 81 Corridor was the only group to oppose the STAR Solution from the outset. RAIL Solution had recently requested a Freedom of Information Act search for documents exposing the relationship between VDOT and STAR Solutions.
In 2003, RAIL Solution proposed building a partnership with Norfolk Southern railroad to create the first truck time competitive intermodal freight railroad in the U.S. Trucks would load trailers and unload trailers in Knoxville, TN, and Harrisburg, PA. Moving the freight by rail over the long distance would save up to 80% of the pollution, including CO2, reduce fuel consumption by 2/3rds, and provide far safer transportation at less cost than doubling the size and privatizing I-81, one of Virginia's most valuable assets.
VDOT, however, supported the STAR Solutions plan and was willing to put all of Western Virginia's economy at risk and those of the adjacent portions of eastern Tennessee and West Virginia, western Maryland, and central Pennsylvania. KBR proposed tolls of almost $130 for a truck to drive just the 325 miles across Virginia.
This was all part of the <a href="http://www.reason.org/ps316.pdf">Reason Foundation</a> plan to privatize our commonwealth of principal freight-carrying interstate highways for profit. I-81 is one of the most freight-congested interstates in the nation. Traffic sometimes exceeds 40% trucks. If it worked in Virginia, they could spread the privatization across the country, creating a web of truck-only toll lanes on top of the U.S. interstate highway grid.
Congressman Young said that he wanted the first toll truckway to be close enough to Washington, DC, for his colleagues to see it. STAR Solutions contractors contributed $150,000 to Young's 2006 campaign as "bread on the water" for the earmark that never materialized, due in part to citizen lobbying led by RAIL Solution and other citizen groups.
The STAR Solution I-81 proposal was declared by earmark watchdog<a href="http://www.taxpayer.net/road2ruin/roads/i-81.htm">Taxpayers for Common Sense</a> as the second worst transportation project in the U.S. in 2005.
With Virginia elected officials salivating at the prospect of $1.6 billion in "free" federal earmark funds (over and above the state transportation allocation), VDOT began negotiations with STAR Solutions towards a public-private partnership in 2004.
Fourty-seven counties, cities and towns in the Virginia and Tennessee I-81 Corridor passed resolutions supporting improved rail service over highway widening, but the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) failed to consider a multi-state rail alternative to an 8-lane interstate. RAIL Solution specifically requested the multi-state rail alternative during the EIS "Scoping Process".
The Federal Highway Administration backed the state's decision to exclude a meaningful rail option, which is a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act which requires exploration of all reasonable alternatives in the EIS.
RAIL Solution turned to a local Republican delegate, Ben Cline, of Lexington. Together they sheparded a bill through the 2006 Virginia General Assembly requiring a multi-state rail study. The bill was passed unanimously, even as the Governor Tim Kaine and the Assembly were locked in a stalemate over state transportation funding.
The study asks: What kind of funds would be required to build a truck time-competitive railroad between Knoxville and Harrisburg, offering sufficient frequency and reliability of service to divert 60% of through state trucks from I-81?
Norfolk Southern agreed to gather the statistical data for the study and the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation will evaluate the data to determine whether public investment in a vastly immproved, grade separated, dual-track railroad would be a worthwhile investment--avoiding construction costs for widening I-81, reducing risk and damage to the regional economy and environment, while providing competitive freight service for shippers and customers located in the Northeast, Mid-South and Southwest.
The multi-state rail study is due out before the end of the year, but VDOT is pressing forward with it's EIS, despite massive (90%) citizen objection and with plans to build a mostly 8-lane interstate anyway. Problem is, there's no funding; that funding engine just dropped out of the I-81 truck tollway juggernaut.