State transit plan faces $851.5 million cut

RICHMOND, Va. -- Virginia transportation officials say they will have to slice $851.5 million out of Virginia's six-year transportation plan, which has already been hit with $3.7 billion in cuts since the spring of 2008.

However, the reduction announced yesterday amounts to a slight improvement over the state's August revenue estimates. Virginia will get something more than $31 million in additional funds for transportation than was forecast.

The plan's proposed spending has now sunk to a total of $22.5 billion for 2010-15.

The latest round of recommended cuts will fall most heavily on road maintenance ($277.1 million), highway construction ($255 million), administrative and support services ($115.2 million) and mass transit ($46.3 million).

"The rate of descent is slowing," Transportation Secretary Pierce R. Homer said yesterday at a meeting of the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

Virginia is being forced to use local road funds to shore up its primary and interstate highways, take road construction funds to repair existing highways, and pare back its public transit efforts, Homer said.

Among the cuts in construction work, the Virginia Department of Transportation is recommending that the U.S. 360 bridge replacement project over the Chickahominy River between Henrico and Hanover counties be dropped and that improvements to U.S. 360 in Mechanicsville be sharply reduced in scope.

As the budget crisis deepens, the Old Dominion's highway program is growing financially fragile.

Virginia is counting on receiving $5.5 billion in federal matching funds during 2010-15. But, Homer said, "we don't have enough state dollars to adequately match federal funds."

For instance, state transportation efforts rely on bonds for the state's matching share every year of the six-year plan, though Virginia's ability to borrow money is increasingly hampered by its shrinking revenues.

"If revenue reductions take us to the point I can't sell bonds," said Reta R. Busher, the VDOT's chief financial officer, "we have an issue."

Contact Peter Bacqué at (804) 649-6813 or .