TWO WEEKS ago, the state Supreme Court nullified the taxes levied by the Hampton Transportation Authority to pay for badly needed bridges, tunnels and highways.
It was a brutal blow, upending a decade of planning and political compromises.
For all the damage that was done, two vital projects that grew out of the legislative breakthrough of 2007 are beyond the reach of the court.
The justices were silent on tolls and left intact other tax increases flowing into VDOT road coffers. That means work now in its earliest stages can continue on the Midtown Tunnel and on unclogging the mess at the Interstate front door to Virginia Beach.
The Virginia Department of Transportation and the HRTA are negotiating a prenup that will precede the Midtown Tunnel expansion. Of the six big projects the HRTA was chartered to construct, it was the only one that could be financed entirely by reasonably priced tolls.
If the project accomplishes what officials hope, it should go a long way to opening two of the tightest bottlenecks in Hampton Roads.
The problem with I-264, from the I-64 interchange to Witchduck Road, isn't just bottlenecks at every exit - it's a system completely overwhelmed by the traffic that uses it. Over the years, adjustments have helped. Now, though, the new traffic patterns create as many problems as they solve.
So VDOT intends, finally, to do something about it. The agency has collected almost three-quarters of the $230 million it needs to begin fixing exits at the interchange, at Newtown Road and at Witchduck, and to add one more pathway across the highway.
This project, which should calm traffic and make egress and exit much safer, is to Hampton Roads what the Mixing Bowl is to Northern Virginia.
It would be among the largest projects in the state and would go an enormous way toward making sense of a very dangerous stretch of highway.
That, after all, is what the now- aborted HRTA was all about, and it's what lawmakers shouldn't lose sight of as they try to put the pieces back together.
All's not lost in HRTA wreckage - VA 
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