A regional transportation group unexpectedly delayed a plan to widen sections of Interstate 66 on Wednesday after a series of deadlocked votes pitted inner suburbs against outer-ring jurisdictions.
Members of the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board voted 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 until Virginia officials conduct a broad-based study of environmental impacts and other possible travel modes on the roadway.
But the board, made up of local officials, resorted to an unusual and rarely used parliamentary procedure of weighted votes based on each jurisdiction’s population after two prior votes on the contentious issue ended in ties.
“The inner jurisdictions ruled that transit trumps roads,” Loudoun County Supervisor Lori Waters told The Examiner after the decision. “There’s no real relief in sight for residents in Loudoun County and outer jurisdictions.”
The I-66 widening project has been debated for years and would widen some sections of the road. But the highway has faced local opposition over its width since it was built. The expansion project was recently shelved when Virginia transportation officials scaled back their six-year transportation plan by $2 billion because of the current economic crisis.
Still, some officials worried Virginia would use federal stimulus money to push the plan back to the forefront. Although Metro and Maryland officials laid out initial proposals Wednesday on how they plan to use their share of the $787 billion federal stimulus plan, Virginia has not spelled out how it plans to use it share of the federal transportation funding.
Christopher Zimmerman, an Arlington County Board member, said the spot road-widening project shouldn’t move forward until officials can study the entire corridor. He said the transportation board initially asked that the study be included before moving ahead with the project.
But Waters countered that some workers cannot rely on transit to get to their jobs and must brave traffic-filled drives. “There have to be options for the commuters who live in the outer jurisdictions,” she said.
David Snyder, who represents Falls Church on the board, said he sided with Zimmerman in favor of shelving the project because it would create other choke points on the road, rather than solve the congestion of the whole road.
“I want to solve the problem of inadequate capacity on Interstate 66 inside the Beltway,” Snyder said. “It needs to be solved, not have the appearance of a solution.”
