WASHINGTON — I was looking for the best way to get from the
Norfolk-Virginia Beach area to New York.
When somebody told me it takes eight hours to drive from Interstate
64 to 95 and up through Washington, Baltimore, Delaware and on to the
New Jersey Turnpike, I was shocked.
When I’m in Virginia, I always think I’m in the Washington, D.C.,
area and about four or five hours from New York.
This was going to be a challenge. I noticed on the map something
called the “Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel” linking
Norfolk with the Eastern Shore of Virginia. It looked like a definite
shortcut to the Northeast. But, even in the Norfolk area, nobody seemed
quite certain what the driving time would be to New York.
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I decided it didn’t really matter. I needed to see for myself what a
23-mile “bridge-tunnel” was really like. Am I glad I did. I got to
experience “one of the seven engineering wonders of the modern world.”
The bridge-tunnel is so awe-inspiring that motorists — even some who
have crossed the facility a number of times — freeze with fear upon
encountering it, unable to drive another inch. When that happens the
Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel police drive the motorist to the other
side.
What is a “bridge-tunnel” anyway? I had never encountered one until
visiting the Norfolk area, which boasts three — but only one as
dramatic as the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. The definition of a
bridge-tunnel is a facility where a bridge transitions into an
underwater tunnel via a man-made portal island or, in the case of the
Chesapeake Bay wonder, four such islands.
Construction on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel began in 1960 and it
was first opened for northbound traffic in 1964. Construction on
southbound lanes began in 1995 and was opened just last April.
Now, here’s the real shocker — and the point of this column: The
entire project cost about $450 million — and not one penny of it came
from any government agency, local, state or federal. Did you hear me?
This amazing engineering feat — a 23-mile span of alternating bridges
and tunnels that seems to defy imagination — was built only through
private ingenuity.
- 12 miles of low-level trestle
- 2 one-mile-long tunnels
- 2 bridges
- 2 miles of causeway
- 4 manmade islands
- more than 5 miles of approach roads
- 5,000 concrete piles to support the trestles
- 1.18 million tons of rock armor for the manmade islands
All of this construction in water that varies in depth from 25
feet to 100 feet.
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Could such a private project even be undertaken today? Would it ever
be approved by the Environmental Protection Agency and a thousand other
government bureaucracies that would scoff at such private initiative?
And what would such a facility cost if it had been planned and built by
government? A billion? $5 billion? A $100 billion?
Who knows?
All I know is that this amazing facility blew my mind when I saw it,
and even more so when I crossed it — four times in recent days.
Had government built it, I would still be impressed. In fact, I would
be even more impressed. Government just doesn’t get things done very
well — efficiently, economically, practically. There are always the
cost-overruns. There are always the delays. Private enterprise is more
efficient, economical and practical even when it must jump through
government’s bureaucratic and regulatory hoops — as I am sure the
private Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel Commission had to do to get this
project off the ground and, in the case of the tunnels, under the
ground.
So, who needs government? This is precisely the kind of massive
engineering and construction project that most people would look at and
say: “Yeah, only the government’s got enough resources to pull that
off.” And, yet, here’s another example of the private sector doing it
better and cheaper.
And how does the bridge-tunnel pay for itself? A $10 toll. That may
seem like a lot. But consider that the only option prior to the
completion of the bridge-tunnel was an even costlier and more
time-consuming ferry ride.
Even more appealing with regard to the toll is that those who use the
facility pay for it — in perfectly fair proportions.
Isn’t private enterprise fantastic? Who needs government anyway?