McLean makes noise about HOT lanes
By Monty Tayloe
McLean residents are expressing new concerns about construction delays and road noise associated with the planned high-occupancy toll lanes slated to expand the Virginia side of the beltway.
Last week, Dranesville Supervisor John Foust (D) held an information session for McLean residents to learn about the project, set to begin construction later this year. It will widen the beltway between the Springfield interchange to just north of the Dulles Toll Road and pass directly through Tysons Corner.
The project will create additional connections to the beltway in Tysons at Jones Branch Road and on West Park Drive.
Last week's presentation got the usual questions about the HOT lanes, regarding cost and the probable bottleneck at the American Legion Bridge, but McLean citizens have some special concerns.
Because the project involves adding two additional lanes to the beltway, every bridge that crosses the highway will have to be demolished and rebuilt, a process that will affect four bridges in the McLean and Tysons Corner areas. This means that McLean commuters won't just have to worry about slow traffic on the beltway during the HOT lanes construction, they may have to worry about backups in their own neighborhoods as well.
For instance, Lewinsville Road has become a popular route for McLean residents seeking to cut around the traffic inside Tysons Corner. During the HOT lanes construction, the bridge that carries Lewinsville Road over the beltway will be demolished and possibly realigned, sure to affect commuters at least temporarily.
Other bridges slated for the same treatment are located in Tysons where Route 7 crosses the beltway, the West Park bridge and on Jones Branch Road.
On the plus side, the project has announced that all of the reconstructed bridges will feature pedestrian facilities, which they currently lack.
Another concern, repeatedly expressed at the Dranesville meeting, relates to sound walls. The project involves rebuilding sound walls the length of the beltway.
The Virginia Department of Transportation is bound by federal Environmental Protection Agency guidelines for the construction of sound walls and will only build them in areas receiving a certain level of decibels of noise pollution and when the cost of the proposed noise barrier equals $30,000 per residence protected.
Residents of several neighborhoods on the edge of McLean have already sought McLean Citizens Association intervention to be considered for a sound wall.
“There's going to be 50 percent more traffic [on the beltway]. ... They have a responsibility to build a wall but it's strictly economic for them,” said Bob Perrotti, who lives in the Saigon neighborhood on the edge of McLean that he feels is already polluted by noise from the interstate.
According to Nick Nicholson, who is overseeing the HOT lanes project for VDOT, all noise barriers are only on a proposed basis right now, pending a public hearing on the entire project in mid-April. According to Nicholson, neighborhoods that don't meet the population density to get a sound wall may be able to get one if they can come up with the cost of its construction through fund-raising or other means.
“This project will definitely have a dramatic impact on the community we live in,” Foust said at the end of the presentation.
Email the reporter at mtayloe@timespapers.com