Beijing and Washington, D.C., are both national capitals and they both have terrible traffic. And at risk of upsetting anyone here, or being censored there, we’ll leave any other similarities aside – except for one: the Beltway.
In Beijing, the Beltway is called the Ring Road, and they have seven of them. On Wednesday, the D.C. area took one teensy step closer to that Beijing model when Virginia’s Commonwealth Transportation Board passed a resolution that some are calling the first move toward building an Outer Beltway.
The mere mention of an Outer Beltway makes conservation advocates start breathing fire, and it makes pro-growth folks start salivating. On Wednesday, however, the pro-growth folks won.
The resolution designates a “north-south transportation link between the major transportation corridors of I-95, I-66 and the Dulles Toll Road,” running through Prince William, Fairfax and Loudoun counties as a “Corridor of Statewide Significance.” The move does not specify a certain road or roads, but essentially sets aside as important the idea of a major intercounty connector – also referred to sometimes as the Tri-County Connector, or the Western Bypass.
Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, said that pursuing the project “would likely divert scarce transportation revenues from Northern Virginia’s most critical needs,” including I-66, I-95, Route 7, Dulles rail and Metro.
Advocates of the corridor say that, first of all, it’s not an Outer Beltway just yet. And, secondly, it’s fundamental to ensuring bearable traffic as Northern Virginia’s population continues to grow, and as more travelers use Dulles airport. According to the commonwealth’s figures, NoVa is expected to grow by 55 percent by 2035, with much of that growth in Prince William and Loudoun. Daily vehicle miles are expected to grow by 123 percent.
If Beijing is any indication, however, officials may want to think twice before even considering outer beltways as any sort of solution to traffic woes. Check out this traffic jam north of Beijing — makes I-66 at rush hour look more like the Autobahnen.
