Picture Boush Street near Nauticus and City Hall Avenue up to MacArthur Mall as a new urban canal. Bits and pieces of roads in Chesapeake, Virginia Beach and Norfolk would be water.
That picture is bad, but even a little bit of permanent flooding drastically alters connectivity. Easy access from Downtown Norfolk to I-264 would be severed by the Boush Street/Waterside Drive artery. Many bridges are not expected to be inundated, but the roadway approaches are susceptible to flooding, making bridges inaccessible.
While expected sea level rise will have a small impact, storm surge poses the biggest threat to regional roads, transportation planner Sam Belfield says.
Ghent's roads are more easily underwater. The historic Portsmouth business district, too.
The Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization and other organizations are studying which roads will be flooded in 30 years and will begin to craft plans to mitigate permanent flooding.
Belfield tested three scenarios:
What do area roads look like with 2 feet of sea level rise?
What about a 2-foot increase and a 25-year storm surge?
Or a 2-foot increase with a 50-year storm surge?
You can how sea level rise will affect your neighborhood and workplace in an online interactive map.
The study hopes to raise awareness, create a plan to adapt and integrate flooding into the merit scoring of future road projects.
Of the 9,500 miles of roadway in the area, .4 percent of roads would be inundated under just sea level rise. It increases to 11 percent and 13 percent total flooding of the roadway network if you add storm surge.
Poquoson would essentially be totally underwater in the worst case storm surge. Hampton, Portsmouth and Norfolk could see 30 percent or more of roadways covered.
But planners can adjust: building new bridges higher, adding protective features to existing roads and relocating the most susceptible roads. There's also expanding stormwater drain systems to avoid heavy flooding during storms.
Belfield also wants planners to add a "flooding vulnerability" section into their 100-point road project scoring system that looks at safety, congestion relief, economic vitality and other factors.
He thinks seven points should address how likely a planned road would be affected by the planned sea level rise and the two other storm surge scenarios.
Belfield said he hopes the data can be used to make decisions in the future.
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