The joint public-private project to widen Interstate 81 is dead.

KBR Inc. has withdrawn from the multibillion-dollar I-81 project, and state Transportation Commissioner David S. Ekern has ordered VDOT to end its involvement in the toll-based effort to improve the highway corridor.

The collapse of the once $13 billion proposal leaves the state without the means for a complete fix for the aging, overburdened road, the Main Street of western Virginia, state officials said.

However, the state has set aside $730 million over the next six years for 87 spot-improvement projects on the 325-mile highway.

And Ekern yesterday directed VDOT to go ahead with two truck-climbing lane projects -- one in Rockbridge County and one in Montgomery County -- to ease the impact of tractor-trailers on I-81 traffic.

"This change does not slow down the planned safety improvements on I-81," the commissioner said in a statement, "it will just change the method through which we deliver these projects."

That work, which will be awarded by conventional bidding, will cost an estimated $146 million.

Formerly a subsidiary of Halliburton known as Kellogg Brown & Root, KBR indicated that its Star Solutions I-81 project no longer fit the company's business.

Last year, KBR separated from Halliburton and became a publicly traded firm, KBR's Government and Infrastructure unit President Bruce A. Stanski wrote to VDOT on Dec. 18.

"KBR has an obligation to its shareholders to manage its business profile very carefully," Stanski said in telling the highway agency the construction giant was withdrawing from the I-81 project.

According to state officials, after four years of trying, VDOT and KBR simply could not reach a mutually satisfactory deal.

"We followed the [state's public-private venture] process," said Malcolm T. Kerley, the Virginia Department of Transportation's chief engineer, "and it didn't work out."

Traffic on I-81 has tripled in the past two decades, VDOT says, reaching nearly 70,000 vehicles a day in Roanoke County, which has the highest traffic volume on the highway. On some parts of I-81, truck traffic nearly equals car traffic.

"We don't have right now a financial plan to make the improvements that really are needed to make 81 work and be safe," said James A. Davis of Winchester, a member of the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

Opponents of the much-criticized Star Solutions plan to add separated, toll-financed truck lanes to I-81 were pleased to see the end of the deal but worried the huge project still has life.

"Only the separated, toll truck-lane project is dead," said Megan Gallagher with the Shenandoah Valley Network. "We're still battling a massive widening that's much too big, costly and destructive."

"KBR's plan is dead," said Stewart Schwartz with the Coalition for Smarter Growth, "but not VDOT's."
Contact Peter Bacqué at (804) 649-6813 or pbacque@timesdispatch.com.