The expansion of toll relief programs to area residents who frequently travel through the Midtown and Downtown tunnels is a welcome development that will help low-income workers across Hampton Roads.

While the tolls continue to be a burden, and remain particularly onerous for residents and businesses in Portsmouth, the cooperative effort that will lower travel costs for more people should help families throughout the region.

When state government officials entered into a deal to expand and refurbish the two tunnels connecting Norfolk and Portsmouth, they knew what they were getting. A private company would accept the responsibility and cost for construction, accepting tolling authority as repayment.

At the time, Virginia was in a bind about how to pay for needed transportation infrastructure across the commonwealth, but especially in always congested Hampton Roads. Utilizing a public-private partnership, it was said, offered a way through without raising taxes.

However, plenty of people knew what would result and made no secret of it. Local officials, urban planners, advocates for the poor — all said the arrangement would be a bad deal for people who had to make the crossing regularly.

“You’re going to create an island here in Portsmouth,” Kenny Wright, then the city’s mayor, told a Virginian-Pilot columnist in 2011. The deal was inked in 2012 and time has proven Wright correct.

A 2018 study by former Old Dominion University President and economics professor emeritus James V. Koch found that Portsmouth shoulders a far greater cost burden than any of its sister cities — six times greater than Virginia Beach residents — and that the tolls cost the city $8.8 million in annual revenue because fewer people come to areas such as Olde Towne to eat, drink, shop and spend.

Consider also that Portsmouth has one of the highest poverty rates in Virginia, at 15.7%, and that, like other cities in Hampton Roads, a high percentage of its residents travel elsewhere to work because there are fewer job opportunities close to home.

It’s little wonder that former Gov. Terry McAuliffe called this “the worst deal ever negotiated of any transportation deals in the history of our commonwealth.”

McAuliffe made those comments throughout his administration and made alleviating that burden a focus during his term, working with the legislature to deliver some help. The state paid millions to reduce tolls, hold off increases and stop an agreed plan to add tolls to the Martin Luther King Jr. Expressway.

Virginia also established a toll relief program eligible for residents of Portsmouth and Norfolk making $30,000 or less annually who made eight trips or more through the tunnels each month.

But in 2017, Virginian-Pilot reporting found some commuters were facing thousands in tolling bills because they did not have E-ZPass transponders, were paying higher rates to use the tunnels and a failure to pay promptly led to additional penalties and the snowballing of debt. One woman racked up $15,000 in tolling debt commuting to a job that paid $11,000 annually.

McAuliffe used the bully pulpit of his office to pressure Elizabeth River Crossings, which operated the tolls, into settling those enormous bills, improving customer service and contributing to the toll relief fund.

Still, the effect was limited. Critics called for expanding the program to include residents of other cities, raising the minimum income threshold and reconsidering the number of trips needed to qualify.

Now, thanks to an agreement among local officials, Elizabeth River Crossings and transportation leaders in the Youngkin administration, toll relief will be available to more residents of the region making $50,000 or less a year. Importantly, officials say they will tweak the changes as needed to improve participation, utilizing money that would otherwise be untouched.

That’s not a perfect solution — nothing short of an end to tolling would be — but it will provide meaningful help to low-income commuters and, by extension, the city of Portsmouth.

Call it a bad deal made slightly less distasteful.