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Officials hope that new High-Occupancy Toll, or HOT, lanes will ease traffic and produce revenue on Interstates 95 and 395, including this stretch near the Fredericksburg exit. |
By EDIE GROSS
SPRINGFIELD--HOT lanes will extend from Washington to Massaponax if Virginia follows last night's recommendation from a panel of transportation officials.
The advisory panel, which has been reviewing two HOT lanes proposals since April, voted 10-3 to support a plan by Fluor Virginia and Transurban USA to create a 56-mile High-Occupancy Toll lane facility from the 14th Street Bridge outside Washington to Interstate 95's Exit 126 in Spotsylvania County.
Panelist Barbara Reese, the Virginia Department of Transportation's chief financial officer, was absent, but she sent a letter indicating that she, too, supported Fluor's plan.
Members of the panel said choosing one HOT lanes proposal over the other was difficult since both plans were so comprehensive.
"It would've been so easy if one of these proposers had come in here slipping and tripping with shoddy work," said Robert Sevila, a member of the panel as well as the Commonwealth Transportation Board. "It would've given us an easy out, but there wasn't an easy out."
In the end, those who supported Fluor said they did so because they felt the firm better integrated public transit into the entire project, provided more access to Northern Virginia hot spots and linked up well to a similar HOT-lanes project on the Capital Beltway, which Fluor is also handling.
The Fluor/Transurban team also offered to invest between $135 million and $270 million of its own money in the project, a risk that impressed the panel.
"We're delighted to have been successful," said Michael Kulper, Transurban's executive in charge of North American operations. "Virginia's done everything it can to encourage proposers to take risks, and we did that."
The 14-member panel's recommendation will be forwarded to interim Transportation Commissioner Gregory A. Whirley, who could decide by January whether it's worth pursuing.
Both HOT-lanes proposals--one by Fluor/Transurban and the other by Clark Construction and Shirley Contracting Co.--would convert the existing High-Occupancy Vehicle lanes, or HOV lanes, into toll lanes.
Motorists with three people in their car would still be allowed to use the lanes for free, but cars with fewer passengers could access the HOT lanes for a fee.
Fluor's $913 million project--paid for with bonds, federal loans and private investments--would run three HOT lanes from the 14th Street Bridge down to Dumfries, and two HOT lanes from there to Massaponax. The first lanes, toward the northern end of the facility, are expected to open in 2009, with later phases coming on line in 2011.
Fluor has also offered to build bus stations and park-and-ride lots along the facility. Fluor officials have estimated that excess toll revenues could generate between $250 million and $510 million that the state could then invest in transit projects.
The Clark/Shirley plan would have built HOT lanes down to the U.S. 17 exit in southern Stafford. The $815 million project also would have included southbound collector-distributor lanes, known as C-D lanes, between U.S. 17 and State Route 3, a fourth southbound lane on I-95 down to Massaponax, and a fourth northbound lane on the highway from Massaponax up to U.S. 17.
Clark/Shirley also set aside money for Virginia Railway Express, phase 8 of the Springfield Interchange and additional parking in commuter lots.
Panel members Dave Ogle, VDOT's Fredericksburg District administrator, and Zeke Newcomb, a former CTB member from Fredericksburg, spoke in favor of the Clark/Shirley proposal.
Both mentioned that previous traffic studies have recommended building C-D lanes, which parallel the interstate and separate local traffic from long-distance commuters, in the Fredericksburg region--something the Clark/Shirley plan would have done.
"Those of us on the southern end of the corridor, between U.S. 17 and Massaponax, we need the C-D lanes in the Clark proposal because we need increased capacity all day long in both directions, not 10 hours in one and 10 hours in the other," Newcomb said.
Both Transurban's Kulper and Herbert Morgan, vice president of operations for Fluor, said if environmental studies recommend building C-D lanes rather than HOT lanes in Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania, the team will pursue that option.
"We're open to whatever the process recommends," Kulper said.
Panel member Dan Tangherlini, director of the District of Columbia's Department of Transportation, suggested that both HOT -lanes proposals move forward, but his motion was not seconded.
For more information about the Fluor/Transurban proposal, visit VirginiaDOT.org on the Web and click on "I-95/395 Advisory Panel Meetings" at the bottom of the page.
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