Truck traffic on Hampton Boulevard in Norfolk has always been a problem. The Virginian-Pilot reports that a compromise on restricting the traffic has been reached. Large trucks will be banned from 4pm to 6a, starting in November.
If you have never been on Hampton Blvd. during rush hour, you’d have no idea how bad the traffic over there is. I avoid the area if I can. The part of Hampton Blvd. that runs thru Ghent is a narrow, four-lane street. I can understand the residents of the neighborhood wanting to eliminate the traffic.
As the article points out, however, trucks cannot be banned from Hampton Blvd.:
City Attorney Bernard A. Pishko told the council that banning trucks altogether from Hampton Boulevard and Granby Street can’t be done without federal permission, because the federal government helped pay for those roadways. Obtaining that permission would take years, he said.
Given that, I would suggest council start talking to the federal government. The residents deserve nothing less.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
As a recent ODU Alum and a soon to be ODU grad student. Let me tell you – It is a matter of time before someone gets killed or seriously injured crossing Hampton Blvd to get to the main campus. Most of the parking now is on the Village side of Hampton Blvd due to new dorms being built and the conversion from a “commuter school” to a residential school.
CNU has seen two students killed crossing Warwick Blvd in the past few years, and there is not nearly the number of semis on that road.
Imagine if cars to ODU were told they wouldn’t be permitted near ODU? Well, I feed my family driving (my) truck down Hampton Blvd. Not to mention I bring all those goodies to your favorite stores. How can few residents on the road to a major tunnel think that they can control the progression of state economy by discriminating the use of a major artery (built with federal funds) to trucks? This is where the the city needs to see the bigger picture- property needs to be removed to make way for wider lanes,to ease traffic (for our exploding population), to make way for the flow of commerce. You can’t expect that one tunnel to be enough for the future needs of that region. The personal needs of a few Ghent residents should not supersede the needs of Hampton Roads. Farmers are not the only people who’s lands are divided to make way for the future transportation needs. When you start messing with the truck drivers in one of the largest seaports of America
you are playing with fire. When (us) truck drivers decide enough is enough you will know the effects. When we refuse to move freight, you will know the effects. We pay
three times the taxes you do to operate our trucks on the very same roads. How do you think your car made it to the dealership? I’m not asking you to like trucks, but to not be so ignorant. We are not just big boxes riding down the road. We are the blood-cells transporting life
(and everything on every shelf in every store) on the arteries (roads) in this country. Stop being so selfish If you people think (us) truck drivers are going to let you limit our ability
to give our families all they deserve and helping our region, you are going to poke at an already burning fire.
Open your eyes people! Everything you see before you is made possible by the movement of freight by trucks!
If the federal government subsidized the railroads as much as they have the trucking industry, long-haul trucking would be a thing of the past. The rails would transport goods between hubs, and the trucks would do the local distribution.
While the “Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways” was constitutionally controversial, as Jefferson believed that the federal government’s building canals was similarly questionable, Eisenhower made the convincing argument that the system was beneficial to national defense, as troops and materiel could be more readily moved where needed. I also believe that the facilitation of truck traffic has also been good for the general welfare of the states. That would also be the case with building railroads, and trains are much more efficient for long-haul work than trucks are.
Like i was saying, don’t discriminate against trucks. How would you folks in Ghent like a couple of trains running
through your neighborhood?
Well, I think if ODU can build a maglev (when’s that going to start working), then some kind of walkway across (as high as the maglev, so trucks can get through).
I am a resident of hampton and also a long haul truck driver.Truck drivers are well trained but when you have nutjobs driveing these cars and not careing how they drive down the street and they mess with a huge trucks by either cutting the truck off witch cannot stop like a car and slamming their brakes then yea someone is going to get killed.Maybe if law inforcement was out there and watching these nuts every morning you can see why there are so many accidents.You know I can go on forever but im not .I say the same thing as the other truck drivers and beleive me when i say SHUT THE TRUCKS DOWN NOW…I Really would like to see this economy on trains hauling the freight what a joke but go ahead im going on a long vacation pretty soon.
I have mixed feelings concerning the truck situation on Hampton Blvd. On one hand, trucks, as one poster pointed out above, are the lifelines that we as consumers need in order to survive. I completely understand that. However, being that I have a fairly compact car, it’s quite nerve-wracking driving next to a very large truck due to the fear of not being seen if one decides to merge into my lane. I think that even though the city of Norfolk would like to maintain the area of Ghent without making any changes to the landscape and housing, adding more lanes/widening the lanes of Hampton Blvd. is going to be necessary in order to foster a more cohesive environment between the truck drivers and the daily commuters.