I friend of mine in Newport News tipped me off to something he saw on the news today about I-64 in Norfolk. VDOT is having a virtual meeting tomorrow about converting the shoulders to Express Shoulder Lanes, but between I-564 and I-264 (eastern). My thing is the existing HOV Express Lanes in the median on this stretch is still very underutilized. I couldn't find the story on that news station's site (WAVY) but I found it from VDOT.
https://www.64expresslanes.org/under_design/norfolk.asp
I wouldn't say underutilized necessarily, it gets decent usage during peak hours, but this project is a waste, IMO. Not only in terms of usage in the off peak direction, but money too.
My biggest gripe of the project, however, isn't the HO/T concept. It's the design. Instead of properly reconstructing the entire highway to accommodate a full left paved shoulder that can be used as a part time HO/T lane, they are simply shifting the right shoulder to the shoulder. The typical section of the project calls for a
two foot right shoulder along the entire project limits in the general purpose lanes, including the Chesapeake Blvd bridge replacement. Additionally, the project will retain the already dangerous left entrance ramp from Tidewater Drive heading westbound, that will now dump into the express lanes directly.
The idea that they want to eliminate the right paved shoulder entirely, full time, on a 7 mile segment of 6 lane urban interstate highway is extremely dangerous, IMO, and blatantly violates any sort of modern highway design along with interstate standards. And the retention of the left entrance is not helping things either. Both of these elements just makes it seem like it's being done on the cheap (still over $300 million however), and rushed, given they want this done before 2025.