MARTINSBURG — West Virginia’s traffic woes could be tomorrow’s nightmare if action is not taken soon, according to a statewide educational coalition that was in town this week as part of a transportation discussion.
West Virginians for Better Transportation representative Joseph Deneault said 37 percent of West Virginia’s bridges are considered structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, and 27 percent of the state’s major highways and roads are considered in poor to mediocre condition.
“If we continue down the path we’re on right now, we’re going to be in a crisis,” said Deneault, whose organization was in Martinsburg this week to hold the fifth of seven regional transportation education sessions. Previous events were held in Beckley, Huntington and Charleston, and additional meetings are scheduled to follow in Bluefield and Wheeling.
The message at all the meetings has been the same: West Virginia’s infrastructure is nearing a meltdown and the problems could continue to worsen if left unchecked.
The group projects that traffic on West Virginia’s highways will increase by 40 percent by 2025, while the number of miles that the West Virginia Department of Transportation is able to repave could drop by nearly half.
A major part of the problem is funding, Deneault said. Highway projects are financed primarily through the state’s gas tax, but as the price of fuel has increased, some drivers have cut back on the number of miles they are traveling. Compounding the problem is the rising cost of construction materials.
These and other factors make figuring out which of the department’s 170 projects should receive funding difficult.
“The bottom line is, all these projects are important to somebody,” Deneault told city, county and state officials during the morning meeting.
The $1 billion in revenues that the Department of Transportation receives is simply not enough money to finance an estimated $20 billion worth of infrastructure projects, he said.
West Virginia is looking at ways to solve this problem.
In 2006, state legislators approved the County Infrastructure Improvement Bill. The measure enables rapidly growing counties to finance roads, water treatment facilities and wastewater treatment facilities through local fees. Such fees must be proposed by a county commission and then go before voters for a referendum.
Deneault said it is likely that Morgantown will be the first to use this new tool by enacting a fee for workers who use the city’s roads. Still, more is needed, he said.
Deneault said other states, including Pennsylvania, are eyeing tolls as a part of the solution. Public-private partnerships are also a possibility, along with leases on roads.
While some in attendance at Tuesday’s gathering said they supported the prospect of tolls on roadways such as Interstate 81, Delegate Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, questioned such a move, saying motorists would simply opt to use other roads.
Blair said the state needs to reconsider a current prevailing wage requirement. This, he said, could save West Virginia as much as 30 percent on labor. But Deneault said labor accounts for only about a quarter of a project’s total cost.
A solution to the state’s transportation woes, he said, will require more than just the elimination of the prevailing wage. A multifaceted approach will likely be the only remedy, he said.