Virginia’s renewed efforts to win regional support for the contentious I-495 Southside Express Lanes project will focus more aggressively on minimizing negative consequences along the 11-mile route, the state’s top transportation official says.
“We will always look to reduce any of those types of impacts,” Secretary of Transportation Nick Donohue said at a meeting last Wednesday (Oct. 21) of the region’s Transportation Planning Board (TPB).
He was speaking specifically of the need to acquire right-of-way on portions of the route, but made similar promises earlier in the meeting related to addressing spillover traffic — a topic that has vexed leaders in Alexandria as well as those in Fairfax and Prince George’s counties.
Donohue spoke to the panel as the Spanberger administration works to resuscitate the 495 Southside project, which went into limbo late last year after regional leaders voted not to include it in the “Visualize 2050” long-range regional transportation plan.
Last month, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) rolled out a new design for the project, which would run from just east of the Springfield Interchange in Fairfax County to just east of Maryland Route 210.
It will be one of the final pieces of Northern Virginia’s Express Lanes effort.
“This is a really, really important project,” Donohue said.
Donohue came to the meeting vowing not to repeat what he and some regional leaders saw as messaging and policy mistakes made by VDOT under the previous administration of Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R).
“You’re seeing me here today to make it very clear to everyone in this room that at the highest levels of the state government in Virginia, we understand that we had work to do,” he said. “This is a collaborative process.”
Maryland, D.C. and some Virginia officials opposed the plan as put forward by the Youngkin administration, saying it didn’t adequately address concerns about spillover traffic and whether transit could be accommodated across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge.
VDOT’s new incarnation of the plan would reserve space in the center of the bridge for future transit use.
There currently is no funding available for running rail lines between Maryland and Virginia over the Wilson Bridge, an effort that will likely cost billions of dollars. But Donohue said the new design would prepare the bridge for that eventuality.
“Virginia supports the region’s plan to add Metrorail across this bridge,” Donohue told regional leaders on the TPB panel. “You have a ready, willing and able partner.”
The latest proposal calls for four general-purpose lanes and two Express Lanes in each direction on the bridge. To accommodate future rail service, the design narrows breakdown lanes to just a few feet, rendering them unusable for vehicles in trouble.
To address that issue, the new VDOT plan calls for tow trucks to be stationed on both sides of the bridge continuously, in order to remove vehicles involved in crashes or facing mechanical difficulties.
At the Oct. 21 meeting, Kanti Srikanth, deputy executive director of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and TPB’s staff director, laid out what would need to happen for the proposal to get to the TPB next March.
First, the body would need to authorize an air-quality analysis looking at the new plan. Srikanth said he believed that could be completed in just a few months.
“There’s a lot of work that’s already been done,” he said.
If completed by early February, that report would be sent out for a mandatory public-review period, allowing a final TPB vote on the project in March.
Maryland officials at the Oct. 21 meeting remained guarded but said they were willing to listen.
Joe McAndrew, Maryland’s assistant secretary of transportation for project development and delivery, said he was thankful for the “thoughtful engagement” from Donohue.
“We appreciate the Spanberger Administration’s revised approach,” McAndrew said.
But he appeared to be not fully sold on the changes as detailed by VDOT.
“More progress will need to be made,” McAndrew said. “There’s much more work that needs to be done.”
Eric Olson, a member of the Prince George’s County Council, was of the same mind.
“Public engagement is going to be essential and needed, front and center, with our communities in Prince George’s,” he said.
Any plan needs to fully address impacts of potential spillover on local roads, Olson said. It is a concern that also has been raised by officials in Alexandria and Fairfax County.
Another Maryland leader — Rockville Mayor Monique Ashton — said she was appreciative of “a constructive dialogue” being held on the topic. But she wanted assurances that the plans being put forward have a firm commitment behind them.
“We have to get things in writing to make sure things do not change,” she said.
Sen. Jennifer Boysko (D-38), who helped scuttle the last incarnation of the proposal, was more upbeat now. The revision “gives me some hope,” she said.
Alexandria City Council member Canek Aguirre said he similarly was not yet fully sold on the proposal, but he’s more willing than before to consider it.
“The direction and vision has really changed,” Aguirre said. “That relationship needs to continue to build.”
Virginia transportation officials said there will be a number of upcoming public information meetings on both sides of the Potomac before the end of the year, but did not yet have dates set.
With Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s (D) term only running through January 2030, Donohue warned regional leaders that a plan needs to be approved and ready to go in that time frame, or a potential successor could reverse course.
“I want to make sure I’m delivering on these commitments,” Donohue said.
His point was echoed by Arlington County Board member Susan Cunningham. She said the project needed to be nailed down “so that we don’t risk moving backward at any point.”
That means getting firm agreements that “outlast us all,” Ashton added.
If VDOT gets the go-ahead from regional leaders early next year, Donohue said he expects the first construction activity to start in late 2029 or early 2030.
