A key regional planning body voted today (Wednesday) to defer until at least 2026 any further consideration of the Virginia Department of Transportation’s plan to extend express lanes on the south side of the Capital Beltway (I-495) across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge and into Maryland.
“The project is simply not ready,” said Eric Olson, a member of the Prince George’s County Council who sits on the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments’ Transportation Planning Board (TPB).
The board has broad powers to determine the D.C. region’s transportation and transit priorities, which in turn help determine which projects get funding.
TPB members on a unanimous voice vote opted to neither include the I-495 Southside Express Lanes project in the region’s “Visualize 2050” growth plan nor to kill it outright. Instead, they approved language giving VDOT the opportunity to work with impacted groups across the region and, if the agency desires, come back with a revamped plan.
David Snyder, a Falls Church City Council member who has a seat on the TPB, said the vote represented not kicking the can down the road, but an effort to encourage collaboration and consensus-building.
“The public around the region expects TPB to act for the benefit of the region,” he said. “This motion does exactly that.”
Before a final vote, VDOT officials and Virginia Del. David Reid, whose 28th House District is located in Loudoun County, sought guarantees that the proposal was not now considered dead.
Kanthur Srikanth, a deputy executive director of the Council of Governments who serves as executive director for TPB, assured them it could come back for future consideration.
“The [long-term] plan is not etched in stone. It is a very living document,” Srikanth said. “The plan can be amended at any given time.”
Before that happens, however, representatives from Maryland and D.C. would need to give their assent, as both jurisdictions now essentially can wield veto power over the proposal.
Several of those representatives said they would keep an open mind, but would require more information from VDOT and community buy-in from their jurisdictions before being willing to authorize the proposal.
“I don’t think anybody should think of this project being on the 5-yard line. There is a lot of work to do,” said D.C. City Council member Matthew Frumin.
Project critics, supporters weigh in
The project as envisioned by VDOT planners would add 11 miles of toll roads connecting Springfield with Prince George’s County over the Woodrow Wilson Bridge in Alexandria.
VDOT had 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.
The proposal included 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.
Critics of the toll lanes, however, believe once they are in place, it would be difficult — or impossible — to retrofit the bridge for transit.
Some of those critics lined up to make their case in advance of the TPB’s final discussion. Their concerns went well beyond the Metro question and to the core of VDOT’s efforts to date.
“Multi-billion-dollar decisions should not be made based on flawed and incomplete information,” said Bill Pugh of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, which opposed inclusion of the project. He accused VDOT of trying to push through a “conclusion-first” study justifying the project’s feasibility.
“It’s a trial-and-error experiment,” added Janet Gallant, co-coordinator of a Don’t Widen 270 advocacy group in Maryland that opposes the Southside 495 proposal.
But Richard Parsons, representing the Suburban Maryland Transportation Alliance, reiterated his organization’s support for moving forward with the proposal, at least eventually.
“It not only pays for itself, it can be used to pay for other projects we need in the corridor,” he said.
Jason Stanford, representing the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance, said the 495 Southside proposal offers “the greatest congestion relief and moves the most people” of the options currently available. But in his remarks, Stanford seemed to foreshadow that deferral might be the day’s outcome.
Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn set the stage for the discussion as the TPB’s newly elected chair. He succeeded James Walkinshaw, a fellow Fairfax County supervisor until his election to Congress in September, and will hold the position for the remaining four months of 2025.
“This is a controversial project, to say the least,” Alcorn said. “I’m hopeful we will be able to move forward this afternoon with some level of consensus.”
He proved to be prescient. With the compromise motion submitted by state Sen. Jennifer Boysko (D-38) and seconded by Maryland’s Eric Olson before discussion began, only a few of the TPB members opted to ask final questions or make statements.
A vote to move forward on the project would not have guaranteed it would have been built, only that it would advance to the next phase of development. But even that was too far for many TPB members.
Opposition was strongest in Maryland and D.C., but even Fairfax County officials over the past year have found themselves split on the merits of the proposal.
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors tentatively backed the project in September, but expressed some anxiety about its potential to increase spillover traffic on local roads. VDOT officials countered that overall traffic times for drivers in general-purpose lanes would be reduced once the toll lanes are operational.
With the 495 Southside project put to the side until next year at the earliest, TPB members will vote in December on the full Visualize 2050 plan. Inclusion in the plan will make specific projects eligible for federal funding.
