Officials reconsider opposition to widening I-66

Key local officials Monday reversed their stance in favor of delaying construction on Interstate 66, making it more likely that the controversial project will proceed.

Fairfax County Supervisors Catherine Hudgins and Lynda Smyth, who initially helped knock the project off its timetable, said in a joint statement with Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Sharon Bulova that they had agreed to reconsider their position.

Members of the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board voted last Wednesday to postpone the road widening on a portion of the interstate inside the Capital Beltway that is a key commuter corridor from Front Royal, Va., to the District of Columbia. They removed the project from the region’s long-range plan, saying Virginia officials first needed to conduct a broad-based study of environmental effects and other possible travel alternatives on the roadway.

But Monday, U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., sent letters to members of the planning board urging them to reconsider their votes.

Wolf, who co-sponsored the federal earmark that would have paid for it, railed against the decision in his letters. “I-66 is clogged morning, noon and night, seven days a week. It is incredulous that anyone would oppose relieving traffic congestion on this choked road,” he wrote. “It is also a major safety issue, especially for our area’s first responders.”

But the Coalition for Smarter Growth’s executive director, Stewart Schwartz, disagreed. “We all want an effective solution to I-66 traffic, but it makes no sense to spend our scarce tax dollars without fully evaluating alternative and less costly approaches,” he said in a statement. “VDOT’s proposed ‘spot improvements’ will only move the bottlenecks, without addressing the underlying problem.”

Instead, he proposes changing existing high-occupancy vehicle lanes from carrying at least two passengers to at least three or adding express bus service.

The I-66 project was slated to widen three sections of the road. But the highway has faced local opposition over its width since it was built. Part of the expansion project was even shelved when Virginia transportation officials scaled back their six-year transportation plan by $2 billion due to the current economic crisis.

One portion was slated to go ahead this year, Virginia Department of Transportation spokeswoman Joan Morris said. It had been funded with a nearly $30 million federal earmark. “The money is on the table. Folks want to walk away from this?” Wolf spokesman Dan Scandling said. “It makes no sense.”

The Transportation Planning Board, which could reconsider the project, is next scheduled to meet on March 18.

Staff Writer William C. Flook contributed to this story.

 

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