by Kerry Dougherty
Virginia Beach politicians are doing their happy dance. Earlier this week state officials gave them good news: they’re “near the finish line” on the Laskin Road project.
Oh, please.
We’ve seen this movie before.
Let’s review, shall we?
In 2019 construction began on the two-mile-long road widening project through the heavily traveled Hilltop corridor of Virginia Beach.
Two measly miles!
The initial cost estimate was $83.2 million and it was supposed to be complete in the spring of 2023.
Construction started to dismantle the feeder road system that runs along Laskin Road and bedevils tourists and locals alike.
Confession: I like the free-wheeling feeder roads. They’re an anything-goes ribbon along a heavily traveled road. Our Little Autobahn where speed limits and rules of the road seem suspended. I used them constantly.
Hah.
The reasons for the years of delays and inconvenience range from covid to utilities.
Those of us who drive through that pockmarked moonscape, risking soft tissue injuries and our front-end alignments, see little progress. Especially around the busy First Colonial Avenue and Laskin Road intersection.
But the Pollyannas at VDOT are now predicting that the intersection will be finished by November 1 and the remainder of the construction will wrap up by spring of 2025.
Two years behind schedule and $67 million over cost estimates. Oh well, it’s only tax dollars.
According to the Virginian-Pilot, the state is attempting to goose the project with an offer of $1.5 million in incentives if the intersection is cleared by November 1.
In other words, the contractor is being rewarded for being behind schedule.
Only a government agency would think this is a good idea.
Here’s some free advice for VDOT: next time, offer incentives for finishing early at the beginning of the road project and attach penalties if there are delays.
Wait. Am I thinking like a business person rather than a bureaucrat?
My bad.
Republished with permission from Kerry; Unemployed and Unedited.
