Transportation issues are among the most important items on a list of the city’s legislative priorities for the coming General Assembly session, and officials should press legislators for as much help in that area as they can get.

City leaders discussed the 2015 legislative agenda during their meeting on Wednesday, and though road and other transportation matters are not necessarily even at the top of the list, they surely will account for much of the lobbying done on Suffolk’s behalf when the legislature convenes in Richmond in January.

For residents of Suffolk, the transportation issues are pretty obvious: Deal with the traffic and safety issues created by the many railroad crossings throughout the city. Widen Holland Road to alleviate the growing traffic and safety problem it has become. Replace the Kings Highway Bridge to restore an important connection between two parts of the city. Build a parallel span to the existing Godwin Bridge to eliminate the bottleneck that occurs there, especially when traffic has been rerouted along Bridge Road because of a problem on the James River Bridge or at the Monitor-Merrimac Bridge Tunnel.

There is growing concern here in Suffolk with the impact that trains are having on the quality of life, and the city’s desire to encourage legislators to pursue solutions is appropriate, especially given the amount of rail traffic that originates from or is headed to Hampton Roads’ ports as it passes through Suffolk.

Delegate Chris Jones, a Suffolk native who is intimately familiar with those problems, succeeded last year in requiring the port authority to study the issue of safety along the Commonwealth Railway Mainline, with the long-term hope of getting the tracks moved someplace safer, much as with the relocation of a portion of that line to the middle of I-664 and Route 164. City officials rightly want to keep pressure on the port authority to move the study from draft stage and, eventually, into construction.

Considering the marquee position that Virginia transportation reform took during the 2013 General Assembly session, it seems unlikely the state’s legislature will have much stomach for another round in 2015, even for demonstrably deserving projects such as the ones Suffolk wants considered.

Still, it’s important to keep reminding legislators that they didn’t solve all the commonwealth’s transportation problems in 2013. Suffolk does well to remember that any projects it has that fall outside the scope of the 2013 reform effectively compete directly with every other project in the state for necessary funding. They should treat each session of the General Assembly as a new chance to make its case.