Despite a full-court press from the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), the future of its plan to extend express lanes on the south side of the Capital Beltway (I-495) remains up in the air as the deadline for a decision looms.
The project to add 11 miles of toll roads connecting Springfield with Prince George’s County over the Woodrow Wilson Bridge is a “critical” piece of transportation planning, a top VDOT official told members of the D.C. region’s Transportation Planning Board (TPB) on July 16.
“We’d be able to move more people with fewer vehicles,” said Michelle Shropshire, who oversees VDOT’s “megaprojects” across Northern Virginia.
Shropshire and VDOT staff have been conducting a variety of community outreach efforts in recent months.
Her remarks came at the last TPB meeting before an all-important Oct. 15 vote on whether to add the project to the Visualize 2050 transportation plan that must be adopted by the end of the year.
Under federal law, it is up to TPB members to decide the project’s fate. If it’s not included in the 2050 plan, the proposal would become ineligible for federal funding and stall.
The I-495 Southside Express proposal took up most of the July 16 TPB meeting. While there will be time for TPB members to seek answers to specific questions for staff, the panel will not gather together until the date of the expected vote.
“We will not meet in August, we will not meet in September,” said the body’s chair, Braddock District Supervisor James Walkinshaw.
VDOT has settled on a preferred design that would add two toll lanes in each direction on I-495 from a point just east of the Springfield Interchange to a point just east of Maryland Route 210. Anticipated access points would include South Van Dorn Street and Route 1 in Virginia and I-295 in Maryland.
That alternative recently won concurrence from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, VDOT officials said at the meeting.
The proposal includes the possibility that two of the four toll lanes could be ceded to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) if that agency moves forward with a plan to extend Blue Line service over the Wilson Bridge from Virginia into Maryland.
The lanes would be required for tracks to be laid in what, to date, remains an aspirational plan of the transit agency.
“We are still working on what that would look like. There is nothing definitive,” WMATA Senior Vice President of Planning and Program Development Allison Davis told TPB members.
Most of the public speakers who attended a public hearing on the project at the July 16 meeting expressed concerns. They came from both sides of the Potomac River.
“The project will push more traffic onto already congested [local] roads,” said Patricia Monroe, an Oxon Hill resident and chair of the South County Environmental Justice Coalition.
She pointed to higher pollution levels, lower property values and the inequity connected to toll lanes.
“Low- and moderate-income drivers are priced out,” Monroe said.
Offering an opposing view was Jason Stanford of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance, an advocacy group that supports the proposal.
Stanford said the toll-road plan would increase accessibility to jobs, reduce traffic delays and achieve improvements with “no negative impact on our air quality.”
Richard Parsons of the Suburban Maryland Transportation Alliance similarly contended that include the project in the Visualize 2050 plan is “a no-brainer and deserves you full support.”
However, Stanford and Parsons were outnumbered at the hearing by critics of the project.
“From the beginning, VDOT’s study has been fatally flawed,” said Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.
Without more analysis, there is no logical reason for the proposal to move forward, he said.
“The project is not ready,” Schwartz said.
VDOT’s Shropshire said a vote to include the project as part of Vision 2050 is not the end of the journey, simply the start of a new chapter.
“We can continue refining the project, we can determine the project’s financial feasibility, we can continue to collaborate and reach consensus,” she said.
Over the past year, Fairfax County leaders have publicly questioned the project, fearing the impact of spillover traffic on local roads. VDOT officials say their analyses indicate that overall traffic times for those in general-purpose lanes would be reduced when the toll lanes are operational.
TPB members will have the next two months to wage through voluminous public comments sent in by mail and emails. The board has received more than 425 communications in the last month alone.
The board is scheduled to vote on whether to include the I-495 Southside Express project in Visualize 2050 in October, but a vote on the full plan won’t come until Dec. 17.
