The Virginia Department of Transportation said Thursday it plans to lay off 1,450 employees as one step in a broad-based shift from building new highways to maintaining those it has.
They also are proposing to reduce services for motorists that includes shuttering 25 of the state’s 41 rest stops, reducing the schedules of four ferries to save $2 million and trimming mowing costs in half by changing the grass-cutting standards. This all comes on top of $2 billion in cuts made last week to projects that were part of the state’s six-year transportation plan.
“It really does represent a fundamental change in our mission here,” said VDOT spokesman Jeff Caldwell. “These efforts now are really to live within our means.”
Revenues from the gas tax and car sales taxes that fund much of the agency’s work have dropped as fewer people take to the roads or buy cars amid the economic downturn. Virginia officials expect that revenue to continue to shrink.
Since 2002, Caldwell said, the department has reduced the number of full-time employees from 10,500 to about 8,400 through attrition.
But now it plans to cut 1,000 more positions in the next 18 months. It also will eliminate 450 hourly employees out of 605 next month.
The agency plans to hold public hearings on its proposal to change motorist services. But Caldwell notes that drivers should know the agency doesn’t plan to reduce services such as snow removal.
“Safety is still our number one job,” he said.
Meanwhile, state officials aren’t counting on the federal stimulus money to save them from such staffing cuts and service changes. Virginia expects to receive about $700 million in highway funds from the federal stimulus plan, Caldwell said, but it has yet to announce how it plans to use it.
Caldwell said the stimulus is only a one-time infusion of cash so it can’t be used for general operations, but transportation officials are hoping to restore some of the 808 projects the state cut from the six-year transportation plan.
Even as it scales back its own construction plans, the agency is continuing to partner with private companies to build high-occupancy toll lanes in Virginia on the Capital Beltway and on a proposed Interstate 95/395 route that would charge tolls based on roadway congestion.
