The Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel will close in one direction at a time for several weekends in October.
The first closures will be westbound: starting this weekend, Oct. 2 to Oct. 5, all lanes of the HRBT will be closed heading west from 9 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday. The westbound lanes could also close the following weekend, Oct. 9 to 12, if the contractor needs to do more work.
At a Sept. 15 Norfolk City Council work session, Councilman Carlos Clanton commended VDOT for avoiding the weekend of Old Dominion University’s homecoming. But he noted that Norfolk State University’s homecoming weekend is Oct. 9 to 11, and said he hoped there was good communication for NSU's because "there should be a lot of people coming here."
Mike Davis, the district engineer for the Virginia Department of Transportation, said he’s hopeful those extra weekends won’t need to be used.
“We did incentivize the contractor that if they finish early, they'll get a significant bonus. We did disincentivize it that if they're late getting out of the roadway come rush hour, there's some hefty penalties tied to that,” Davis told Norfolk City Council.
Oct. 16 to 19 will see closures of all eastbound lanes, with another option to close Oct. 30 to Nov 2. Those closures will also run from 9 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday, with the early November weekend only closed if needed by the contractor.
Davis also said the work is badly needed – one tube hasn’t been paved since 2012, the other since 2006.
