The HOT lanes are coming.
By Monty Tayloe
With less than a month to go before construction officially begins on the new beltway toll lanes, the final plans are wrapping up their warp-speed procession through the usually slow public process. The fast pace has caught much of the public and several government officials unawares.“All the way up to the end we haven't had info about impacts that we would have had if [the Virginia Department of Transportation] had done this the usual way,” Supervisor Sharon Bulova (D-Braddock) said during a meeting between the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Transportation Committee and representatives of the high-occupancy toll lanes project.
Those unexpected impacts have included the clearing of a construction site right across the street from Cooper Middle School in McLean, the possibility that a Tysons Corner office building may be rendered uninhabitable by the new road construction, and plans to widen the beltway right into the back yards of one unlucky Falls Church neighborhood. Some supervisors are also concerned by the amount of clearing to be done to make way for the wider beltway.
“I don't think folks understand the extent of clearing that's going to be done. ... It's going to be a different beltway,” Bulova said.
At Inova Fairfax Hospital in Merrifield, administrators and surgeons are concerned about access to the expanded beltway. Presently, ambulances carrying victims of beltway accidents can use a ramp to get directly onto Gallows Road, giving them quick access to the hospital. In current plans for the post-HOT-lanes beltway this ramp no longer exists, a situation that could cost lives, according to Supervisor Penny Gross, who sits on Inova's board.
Nick Nicholson, VDOT's project manager for the HOT lanes and other “mega projects,” admits the hospital access problem is a big one, but says many of the impacts are exacerbated by VDOT funding woes. VDOT projects usually have a contingency fund, with extra money for unexpected difficulties such as landscaping or access improvements.
“The way our funding is, I have no contingency fund. ... I have no additional funding,” Nicholson said.
Although the HOT lanes are a public-private partnership between VDOT and the private firms Fluor and Transurban, the private companies' costs were set at the beginning of the project. “When we go out of the scope of the project, someone has to fund it ... usually that's VDOT or the private sector,” Nicholson said.
VDOT has also pledged to build additional sound walls, an improvement outside the scope of the original plan to protect neighborhoods bordering the Georgetown Pike.
“VDOT is committing to build these walls before opening the HOT lanes to traffic,” said Nicholson, but he added, “I haven't put my hand on the funding yet.”
Both the Board of Supervisors and VDOT have pledged to increase the lines of communication between the two groups. The board has even created a HOT lanes subcommittee for the project, to better prepare the public for future effects from the expansion.
“[The public is] concerned about the deal being already done when we don't have all the plans yet. ... We're 60 percent done. We're on the details now,” Nicholson said.email the reporter at mtayloe@timespapers.com