Public-Private Archive for Get There - The D.C. area traffic and transportation blog

Watch for changes on Route 28 near Dulles

The new interchange at Route 28 and Frying Pan Road is scheduled to be completely open to traffic by Monday, the Virginia Department of Transportation says. The entire Route 28 project, years in the making, is now in its final phase of widenings and interchange improvements. This will represent one of the most significant road improvements in the region during the decade. But for now, just worry about staying alert through the Frying Pan Road interchange for various lane closures and flagging operations in anticipation of the full opening. This redirection of traffic should continue through 6 a.m. Thursday. Then starting Thursday, traffic on westbound Frying Pan Road will reach southbound Route 28 by the new interchange ramp. Also, from after this evening's rush hour through noon Monday, westbound Frying Pan Road traffic heading toward northbound Route 28 will be detoured to the Air & Space Parkway interchange and then...

Rooftop Groundbreaking for HOT Lanes

"We have done it," Virginia Transportation Secretary Pierce R. Homer said this morning, just before the ceremonial groundbreaking for the HOT lanes project along the Capital Beltway. He was referring to the successful development of a construction program, but quickly pointed out that there's an enormous amount of construction and disruption ahead over the next five years. Homer and other public and private leaders of the HOT (high occupancy or toll) lanes project were standing under a tent on the roof of a Tysons Corner Center garage, just after this morning's line of storms rolled through. The Capital Beltway, where the heavy lifting gets underway starting tonight, was just below to the east. Homer said the project would not have gotten this far without the leadership of U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters, who is an advocate for such public-private partnerships and for the variable tolling system that the HOT...

The Highways of the Future -- Or Not

Please join me today for a Live Online discussion of transportation topics at 1 p.m. The future of our roads and transit systems have been in the news lately and an election is coming up that could affect the destiny of some transportation projects, particularly in Maryland. With governments so reluctant to raise more money for transportation projects, many are looking to various forms of public-private partnerships to build roads and even transit systems. In Maryland, Gov. Robert Ehrlich's administration recently put out a call for new proposals along those lines. But in today's Post, Eric Weiss shows that this approach may have some real difficulties. See his story headlined "Beltway Toll Plan May Need Va. Funds" to see that the plan to have a private company build express toll lanes on the Capital Beltway in exchange for some of the toll revenue -- one of the major congestion-relief projects...

Environmental Group Says Toll Highways Okay

We take a break from bad commuter week to share an interesting development in the transportation world. The advocacy group Environmental Defense has come out in favor of using public-private partnerships to build tolled highways. Their support, as you might imagine, came with a couple caveats. They prefer tolls to be added to existing lanes with minimal widenings and for some of the revenue to be used to fund public transit and to protect the environment. If highways are done in this way, Environmental Defense sees winners all around. Taxpayers don't have to pay for most of the fixes, drivers gain more capacity and more assurance, transit options are increased and the environment is protected. In the real world this means that they do not think that the intercounty connector is a good idea because it is a brand new highway that brings with it a number of environmental concerns....

Mr. Kaine Goes to Washington

I just got back from Capitol Hill, where Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine spent the morning telling the House Subcommittee on Highways, Transit and Pipelines (say that five times fast) all about the state's public-private highway and transit ventures. Virginia has the most in the nation and I believe has been doing this the longest, so the subcommittee wanted to talk to Kaine about a practice that is fast spreading across the country. Kaine shared the stage with Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, who recently signed a 75-year, $3.8 billion deal--the biggest in American history--to lease the Indiana turnpike to a private consortium. Kaine knew his stuff (as did Daniels) and you got the sense that he was excited to be on the Hill, but not so much that he was overwhelmed by it. In his opening remarks, Kaine noted that Virginia manages the third largest highway system in the United...

Get There Archive: Public-Private

Watch for changes on Route 28 near Dulles

Rooftop Groundbreaking for HOT Lanes

The Highways of the Future -- Or Not

Environmental Group Says Toll Highways Okay

Mr. Kaine Goes to Washington