Virginia must slash its transportation budget by between $2.1 billion and $2.6 billion over the next six years, with impending cuts to highway, transit and ferry programs likely to affect virtually every commuter in the state, officials said Wednesday.
The cuts are in addition to a $1.1 billion reduction in state transportation funds made in June.
“It will impact the way we take care of the right-of-ways,” Virginia Transportation Secretary Pierce Homer said. “You’ll probably see it first in mowing, you may see it in our rest areas, in our ferry services, and you may see it starting to grow then in our snow and ice services. It will be across the board — it will affect every aspect of our drivers’ lives.”
State transportation agencies will determine which services to eliminate over the next two months and will then evaluate which planned construction projects to slash.
Several large Northern Virginia projects are safe because they are already funded and under way, officials said.
Those include the high occupancy toll lanes project on the Capital Beltway, the Metrorail extension to Washington Dulles International Airport, the Woodrow Wilson Bridge expansion and the Telegraph Road project.
The dire fiscal situation is the result of dwindling state revenues from sales taxes, gas taxes and vehicle taxes, and an anticipated reduction in federal transportation funds, which comprise about 60 percent of Virginia’s road construction budget.
Homer warned that the financial changes are likely permanent.
“We believe these changes are structural and long-term in nature,” he said. “They are not cyclical and there is not a likely prospect of a bounce back in gas tax revenues, in sales taxes or in personal property taxes.”
The Virginia Department of Transportation will slash its 8,400 full-time staff by 900 people as part of the budget reduction, VDOT Commissioner David Ekern said.
Virginia drivers will likely notice a difference in their commute over the following years, Homer said.
“Surfaces may get rougher, signals may get repaired slower,” he said. “Those are the hard trade-offs that our staff is going to be looking at.”
