'This is going to be painful:’ Virginia stares down $1.7 billion funding gap for highway maintenance

Virginia is considering significantly reducing construction funding to remedy a $1.7 billion funding deficit for highway maintenance. Over the past two decades, Virginia has gained 2,000 miles of pavement and 400 bridges, which require millions annually for maintenance and repair. 

State law requires Virginia’s Commonwealth Transportation Board to prioritize maintenance funding over construction. During a work session on Sept. 15, Laura Schewel, Virginia’s deputy secretary of transportation, suggested shifting funds from construction to maintenance to address the funding gap, and “proposed increasing maintenance to roughly $290 million per year, over the next six years. That would significantly reduce construction funding, including the state’s Smart Scale program, unless it adopts mitigations,” Virginia Mercury reports. “Funding for transportation projects through the Smart Scale program could drop temporarily by around 51%.”

Virginia Mercury reports:

“There is no mitigation strategy that makes this not painful,” said [Virginia] Secretary of Transportation Nick Donohue on Tuesday. “This is going to be painful no matter what we do moving forward.”