Tolls on the George P. Coleman Memorial Bridge are set to be removed by the end of the calendar year, once Gov. Glenn Youngkin signs the state budget into law.
Tolls were first imposed when the bridge opened in 1952 and remained in effect until 1976. They were reinstituted in 1996 after the span linking Gloucester Point and Yorktown was widened to four lanes and have been in effect ever since.
The Virginia General Assembly’s 2025 budget bill (HB1600) includes a provision to remove all tolls from the Coleman Bridge as of Jan. 1, 2026.
The text of the bill, numbered D.1. under Item 441, Commonwealth Toll Facilities, states that “No later than January 1, 2026, all rates, fees, tolls and other charges shall cease to be collected for the use of the George P. Coleman Bridge.” It states further, under D.2., that funds that can’t be reimbursed to the Toll Facility Revolving Account “shall not require reimbursement.”
The bill doesn’t state a specific financial impact on the budget from no longer collecting the toll, but it was left intact by Youngkin when he gave the General Assembly his recommendations for changes to the budget bill.
The provision is subject to Youngkin signing the bill. The deadline to do so is tomorrow, Friday, May 2.
History of tolls on the bridge
Tolls were assessed to pay for the Coleman Bridge beginning the day it opened, May 7, 1952. According to a June 1976 article in the Gazette-Journal, vehicles were lined up to cross the bridge after opening ceremonies were held, and they were allowed to cross free of charge up until 5 p.m. that day.
The $9 million bridge, with construction financed by the sale of revenue bonds authorized by the General Assembly in 1940 but delayed by World War II, replaced a ferry system that had been in place since at least 1690, said the article. More modern systems were installed in the late 1880s and the early 1920s by successive private business enterprises. In 1951, the Virginia Department of Highways purchased the ferry system, which was taken out of service when the bridge opened.
In 1976, with the bridge paid for, the tolls were lifted. A brief ceremony was presided over by then-Speaker of the House John Warren Cooke (late owner of the Gazette-Journal), joined by the deputy commissioner of highways, relatives of the bridge’s namesake, George P. Coleman, and other local dignitaries.
Then, in 1992, plans were made to widen the bridge from two lanes to four lanes, with $38.1 million in toll revenue bonds issued and placed in a revolving account to help pay for the project, along with $19.5 million in federal funds. According to a June 2018 article in the Gazette-Journal, revenues from tolls only brought in half of the amount projected by VDOT, and the annual debt service on the revenue bonds combined with the operating expenses of the toll facility left little money to pay off the revolving fund.
Given the delays, John Lawson, then chief financial officer for the Virginia Department of Transportation, projected in 2018 that the bridge would be paid off by 2032 unless revenues exceeded expenditures.
County supervisor Ashley Chriscoe, quoted in that 2018 article, said that Gloucester residents were “now being left on the hook by a mistake in the 1992 forecasted growth rate.”
“We’ve done everything we’re supposed to do, and now we’re looking at an extra decade or more,” he said in the article.
Perhaps that problem will be solved with the governor’s signature tomorrow.
The reenrolled version of the bill, published during the reconvened session after the governor’s budget recommendations were made, is available online at budget.lis.virginia.gov/get/budget/5118/HB1600/1079303.PDF.