NORFOLK, Va. — Good news for drivers with questions about the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel. On Wednesday, the folks at the HRBT Expansion Project opened the HRBT Welcome Center.
The center is located just off 4th View Street in Norfolk and takes attendees on a tour through the history of the HRBT. You can learn about all the cool stuff uncovered through the tunnel digging, like the bones of a Mastodon that are more than 10,000 years old, as well as cannonballs from the Civil War era.
At the center, you’ll also be able to find out more about the tools and devices used to build the tunnel, and why it takes so long to complete a project of this magnitude.
“We turn stakeholders in advocates where folks can go home and say, 'I’ve learned about how a 10 million pound boring machine works its way across the bay,' and have a little bit of a better appreciation of the hard work we put in every day, and also appreciate that light is at the end of the tunnel here in the very near future,” said project director, Ryan Banas.
Watch related coverage: Hampton Roads Transit celebrates 25 years of service
News 3 also took the chance to ask Banas about the completion date. He says they are still on track for a completion date of February of 2027, but they also have an incentive of $90 million to finish before September of 2026.
Banas expects 2025 to be busy, and drivers will see a lot of changes along I-64.
“Across the corridor, we expect 2025 to be our biggest year yet. Before summer, we expect to move traffic between our south island onto our new south trestle. That eight-lane mega trestle, we’ll be shifting traffic onto that, as well as major traffic shifts throughout the Norfolk corridor from Willoughby Spit all the way down to Patrol Road,” Banas said.
For more information on the project, click here.
