Beltway toll lanes expected to open by the end of the year
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| The Gallows Road exit on the beltway. |
If you’re one of those people vowing to never pay to drive
on the beltway or feel the new Express lanes (they’re not called HOT lanes anymore)
promote a class system, with the affluent able to pay for a less-congested trip,
the companies developing the new system want to set you straight.
Transurban, the company operating the Express lanes, “only 25 percent of
toll-paying customers on SR-91 in Southern California are in the top income
bracket.” She says the Express lanes will encourage carpooling, noting that
carpool rates have increased nearly 9.6 percent since the SR-91 HOT lanes
opened in 1995.”
expected to open by the end of December.
rush hour, but “could be considerably more,” said Coffee. “There is no maximum
on tolls.” She suggested the tolls could be as much as $20 to $25 during the
heaviest traffic conditions, like the day before Thanksgiving.
company responsible for designing and building the $2 billion beltway
expansion/Express lanes project, will be speaking at community meetings over
the next few months to explain how toll lanes work and encourage people to
purchase the E-ZPass transponders they’ll need to take advantage of them.
about three to five miles, and people will most likely use them if they’re late
for an appointment or otherwise in a hurry, not for everyday commuting. “Most HOT lanes users on SR-91 pay to use the lanes a few times a week when they need a faster or
more reliable travel time,” she said.
Springfield interchange to the Dulles toll road.
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| The beltway viewed from Gallows Road. |
The toll amounts can be adjusted every six minutes, but will
be locked in when you enter the Express lanes. The Express lanes are in the
middle of the beltway, and you’ll only be able to access them from certain points.
For example, the Little River Turnpike exit won’t have access to the Express
lanes. From Gallows Road, you’ll be able to get on the Express lanes heading
north, but not south.
hybrid cars. High-occupancy vehicles (HOV) with three or more people can use the lanes for free. Motorcyclists
also won’t be charged. Large trucks will not be allowed to the use Express
lanes.
transponder will be automatically read as you enter the Express
lanes and deduct the toll amount from your online account.
that monitor traffic conditions. Tolls will be set at amounts designed to keep
traffic moving at 55 miles per hour, Coffee said. Drivers will see signs with
pricing to three destinations, including the maximum toll to get to the
farthest exit, so they’ll know before they enter the Express lanes whether the
faster ride is worth the cost.
the beltway Express lanes, but if you want to take advantage of the
toll-free HOV rule, you’ll need an E-ZPass Flex with an HOV switch you can use to indicate there are three or more people in the car.
said. State troopers will be able to do a “visual assessment” to check whether
there actually are three people in the car. A driver who turns on the HOV switch by mistake will be able to go online
and make a correction and pay the toll. If you don’t, you’ll get an invoice with
the toll plus a fee.
an E-ZPass Flex (50 cents for the non-Flex pass) plus pay a down payment of $35,
which will be applied to tolls. You can get E-ZPasses online, at the DMV in
Tysons Corner, some AAA offices, and some Giant and Wegman’s stores. People who
order an E-ZPass in September will get two free weeks.
you paid and how much is in your EZ pass account. Drivers can add to their
accounts online or arrange to have their accounts loaded automatically.
Several people at the meeting raised concerns about
breakdowns. There aren’t any shoulders along the left side of the regular,
non-Express lanes, so if a car is disabled in the left lane, it would have to
be moved across the lanes to the right shoulder. If there is a vehicle breakdown in the Express lanes and
traffic is stalled, drivers will be able to request a reimbursement in their
toll.
95 percent complete, said Breme. All the bridge
work is finished. All the tolling structures are in place, and test vehicles
have been cruising the Express lanes to make sure they work. The ramps at
Braddock Road, Gallows Road, and Lee Highway are still not quite finished.
Drainage and grading is still going on at Braddock, and Fluor is working with VDOT to adjust the
signal timing at the Braddock and Little River Turnpike exits. A new signal will be installed at Gallows Road, regulating
drivers who want to go left or right when they exit the Express lanes.
the regular and Express lanes, but emergency vehicles will be able to cross
lanes if needed, Breme said. There will be back-up generators to keep the
system functioning in case of a power outage.
beltway, which will start in spring 2013.
lanes project on Interstate 495 between Edsall Road and Garrisonville road in Stafford
County.
I am against the project mostly because of its impacts to Tysons through the oversized onramps that take up multi-million dollar property in the heart of the city to the bridges which end at left turns.
The one benefit will be the pseudo-BRT bus routes which I think after a few months will be far more popular than SOV HOT lane traffic or even car pooling. For 4-5 dollars you can get a basically unimpeded bus ride from transit hubs in Burke/Lorton/Annandale to Tysons. It could be a big boost to a lot of commuters and I think will take a lot of cars off the road.
I wish the express lanes were separated from the regular lanes by more than just some crappy plastic white tubes. Cars will be stopped in the regular lanes whilst the BMWs and Mercedes whiz by in the express lanes at 55 MPH or more realistically 70 MPH. There should be a concrete jersey barrier in between. But I suppose cost > safety, eh Flour/Transurban?
Concrete jersey barriers require wider shoulders. Wider shoulders would have required more adjoining houses being condemned for the lane expansion. I'd have preferred concrete jersey barriers, but my house was not on the chopping block.
From what I can tell the new express buses won't be stopping in Annandale.
yes, because there isnt an onramp to the express lanes that would make sense for them – the only onramp north of braddock is gallows road, and there probably isnt sufficient ridership to justify having buses up Gallows than up the HOT lanes. Maybe someday, if and when Gallows gets even more congested than it is now.
Didnt our taxes used to pay for roads? Oh yeah, I forgot, the Democrats took all that and plowed it into wasteful entitlement programs to buy votes and we have nothing to show for it but debt. So now the less affluent complain these are lanes for "the rich"? We've all been shafted here by liberal "class warfare" once again that divides even the roads.
Wasteful entitlements like the Medicare prescription drug benefit? Oh, wait–that was the GOP. Or was it the optional war over WMD? Nope–that was the GOP, too.
Party aside, we're going to rue the day when we let road construction become a profit center for private companies, who'll be collecting tolls for 50-75-99 years. Just ask the folks in Ashburn who keep seeing their Greenway tolls go up and up and up.