HENRICO — Virginia’s transportation doomsday clock is ticking down to 2017.

That’s essentially the message approximately 50 mayors and chairs of boards of supervisors from the Golden Crescent — the regions of Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads — had Thursday for state legislators and residents.

“It’s about our kids that we’re here,” the group’s facilitator Jim Oliver told the officials who gathered in Henrico County to discuss the state’s ongoing transportation funding shortage. The group wants to influence legislators and the governor to identify new, sustainable revenue sources and avert a looming crisis.

Because the state gas tax has remained static for about 25 years while costs have grown significantly, available revenue has dwindled. Currently, $500 million in capital improvement funds from the state’s transportation trust fund are taken annually to support highway maintenance.

The situation is expected to go from the bad to the worst in 2017 or 2018 when it is projected that all state construction money will run out along with the ability to match federal funds and available maintenance dollars will be even more insufficient to meet needs.

Thursday’s gathering is significant because the Golden Crescent comprises 24 percent of the state’s land area but holds 68 percent of its population and 72 percent of its employment. In addition, 63 percent of Virginia’s daily vehicle miles are traveled in the region and 63 percent of the state’s vehicles are registered in those three metro areas, according to Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization data.

“Here is a crescent of core cities and counties saying to you (legislators and the public) now as a group, ‘We have a transportation problem,'” Tom Shepperd, chairman of the York County Board of Supervisors, said after the meeting.

“We see this becoming a crisis — in a sense it already is a crisis,” Shepperd said. “We want to help them understand that and have the will power to come up with viable solutions and that is new revenue.”

The officials, both Democrats and Republicans, spent several hours developing a core list of common ills with little dissension. Their only real disagreement was whether to suggest specific solutions to legislators. At one point, a show of hands revealed only about half of the participants were in favor of raising the gas tax.

Through the discussion, the panel coalesced around a number of “big points” including:

• The concept that the whole state is connected and there is no single solution.
• That “doing nothing is not the same as saving money.”
• Ignoring transportation infrastructure equates to compromising the state’s competitiveness.
• There is a need to create a permanent revenue stream dedicated to transportation.
• To discourage the state from over reliance on tolling.

In the end, the leaders adopted a resolution to be included with a letter to be penned by Fairfax Mayor Sharon Bulova that will be sent to state legislators and the governor. The resolution asserts that a comprehensive plan, that includes new revenue sources, should be developed to meet statewide maintenance and capital improvement needs, and “mitigate the financial forecasts for 2017.”

After the meeting, Newport News Mayor McKinley Price said he believed the right solution is a combination of new taxes, tolls and greater efficiency.

“We need to be able to better communicate the gravity of the situation,” he said. “There are effects to the military, economic development, jobs and evacuation capabilities. It’s all critical to the area. People aren’t seeing the importance of the problem.”

But Price indicated a sea change may be coming. “The fear of tolls has gotten people’s minds open to more avenues of reproach. I think they’re ready.”