BY CHELYEN DAVIS

RICHMOND—A bill that would have provided state bond money to build an extra lane on Interstate 95 near Fredericksburg has failed.
 Del. Mark Cole, R–Spotsylvania, said he wasn’t surprised that a House Appropriations subcommittee voted to table his bill.

He filed it, he said, to draw attention to the road needs around Fredericksburg. He fears that the extension of High Occupancy Toll lanes south of Garrisonville to Massaponax—which could be pushed back to 2018—might never happen.

Cole’s bill would have called for the building of an extra lane—not a HOT lane—on I–95 between Garrisonville, where the next phase of HOT lane construction is slated to end, and Massaponax.
“In the Fredericksburg area, there’s a lot of traffic between Stafford and Spotsylvania,” he told the subcommittee. “The capacity of I–95 is simply exceeded. This is an attempt to highlight the problem and hopefully bring some resolution to it.”
The subcommittee members tabled the bill with little discussion, except to note that there was no money identified for Cole’s project and that it wasn’t part of the governor’s transportation plan.

“I’m just trying to highlight the problems in the area,” Cole said afterward. “Everybody’s banking on the HOT lanes to solve all the problems on 95.”
He fears that without constant pressure on transportation authorities, “it’ll be decades before we see any more improvements.”

Chelyen Davis: 540/368-5028
cdavis@freelancestar.com