Ronaldo “Nick” Nicholson leads Virginia Department of Transportation’s efforts to coordinate the construction of multibillion-dollar “megaprojects,” including the Capital Beltway high-occupancy toll lanes and the Dulles Rail extension. He was also construction manager for the Woodrow Wilson Bridge project.
Are we at a time when commuters have really started to notice lane closures and traffic shifts in Tysons Corner?
You have four projects that are really trying to move forward in the last of the summer, and three of them are obviously having an impact on our summer commuters. [Monday] we closed the southbound Beltway to northbound Route 123 ramp for the next six weeks for HOT lanes. You see work that is scaling up in Tysons Corner on 123 and Route 7 for Dulles Rail. The Telegraph Road work — on the east side of the Capital Beltway — is kind of in high gear. And that was kind of intentional — we looked at the August time frame, when the most of our daily commuters are on vacation.
Compared with the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, how does this job rank in terms of the complexity and magnitude?
The magnitude is fourfold. Woodrow Wilson was a $2.5 billion effort, pretty much confined in the southern part of the Capital Beltway. With Virginia megaprojects, we are all over Fairfax County. … When you look at the last phase of Woodrow Wilson and Telegraph Road, you look at fourth lane-widening in the I-95 corridor, HOT lanes and Dulles Rail on the Beltway in the Tysons area, all that is a real challenge to us as we try to safely move highway construction production while at the same time maintaining safe mobility for everybody using our system
What do you say to people irritated with the short-term closures and traffic?
I am very sympathetic to their concern from a standpoint that nobody wants to be inconvenienced or disrupted. These are major highway improvements that in the long term will bring a better quality of life for all.
— William C. Flook
