The Virginia Department of Transportation needs $709 million to maintain state highways next year, but it's budget is only $318.2 million. "We're beating the existing lane-miles to death," said J. Douglas Koelemay, a Commonwealth Transportation Board member from Springfield. "We don't even have the resources to do what we say our priorities are."

VDOT officials say a fifth of Virginia's interstate highways and almost a third of all state-maintained secondary roads are deficient. "Thirty percent substandard," transportation board member James A. Davis of Winchester said of the secondary roads, "and we don't have money to keep them from getting worse."

Transportation infrastructure can be be an important factor for home buyers, and can therefor have an impact on home value.

Read more in the Richmond Times-Dispatch....