NORFOLK, Va. — On Thanksgiving, Adam El was waiting at the airport checking his phone. The airport, he said, is a good place to find customers in need of a ride.
"And you want to see if somebody reserved to pick up," explained Adam El, Uber/Doordash/Amazon driver as he displayed the app he uses to connect with customers.
The cell phone lot at Norfolk's airport is a spot where rideshare drivers wait, and it's where others waited too.
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Walcy Carroll is not a rideshare driver, but he stopped by Thursday to pick up family.
"I drove from Suffolk, about 45 minute drive down here to pick up my wife's sister and her brother-in-law for the holidays," said Walcy Carroll of Suffolk. "Traffic was easy getting down here."
Driving around Hampton Roads, the men said, was easy this holiday, but that's not always the case.
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"It's not heavy traffic, but sometimes we are the number one in accidents in Virginia Beach," said El.
Some areas are better than others, but if you're trying to get from the airport to Hampton, you're probably going to take one of the region's most significant chokepoints. That's the 2.5 miles of I-64 between LaSalle Avenue and Settlers Landing Road.
That stretch, along with other areas of I-64, is slated for improvement. There, workers are set to add one full-time express lane, one part-time express lane, and two general purpose lanes in each direction.
Work is already underway on another part of I-64 between Tidewater Drive and Patrol Road. There workers are constructing another segment of express lanes.
The future work also includes the widening and repair of multiple bridges.
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All this is part of a $197.6 million project. And that's not all, earlier this month the U.S. Department of Transportation announced that it is providing a $141 million low interest loan to the Hampton Roads Transportation Accountability Commission for I-64 improvements.
Project organizers say these changes will improve travel times by roughly 10 minutes.
Travel times are especially important to drivers like El.
"Sometimes we'll be driving like five or six miles to pick up a customer then will be stuck somewhere," said El. "When he see you're not moving he'll cancel it and order another one. Then we lose money."
VDOT expects the project to be completed by late 2026.
