Transportation planners are mulling over how to manage two enormous construction projects that could get under way at roughly the same time in Tysons Corner, a convergence that threatens to further bottleneck an already traffic-choked area.
The Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project will, under the governor’s current plan, bring a massive elevated track across Routes 123 and 7, which many fear will exacerbate the Tysons traffic nightmare. The Tysons Corner portion constitutes about four miles of a total 23-mile expansion of Metro to Dulles Airport.
But a lesser-known project — which will add new High Occupancy Toll lanes along the Capital Beltway and three new ramps in Tysons — complicates an already Herculean traffic planning effort in the closest thing to Fairfax County’s downtown.
“We’d be fooling ourselves to think that this would not be a monolithic undertaking to manage traffic and maintain traffic flow while we do this construction,” HOT lanes project manager Roger Boothe said.
“What you are talking about are two mega-projects, in terms of dollars and in terms of infrastructure,” he said. “They are happening literally side by side; they are happening literally in each other’s backyards.”
The HOT lanes, like the Dulles rail project, will be conducted under a public-private partnership between Virginia and two private firms. If a series of approvals is forthcoming, both projects could break ground by the end of the year. Neither projects have a finalized price. Boothe said major HOT lanes details, including the final design, still are being worked out.
Under the current proposal by contractors Fluor and Transurban, two new ramps would be installed on Route 7 and another on the Westpark Bridge between Tysons’ two malls.
Providence District Supervisor Linda Smyth spoke optimistically of the HOT lane project, saying she expected it to pull traffic off the area’s two most clogged arteries.
“Construction is always, in one way or another, somewhat disruptive,” she said. “But I think in the long run that the HOT lanes are adding a lot of capacity to the Beltway and in fact help get the cars off 123 and 7.”
