How Are Those Inside-the-Beltway Toll Roads Working Out?

Mar 4, 2020

—

Source: “2019 Corridor Performance Report for the I-66 Inside the Beltway and I-395 Corridors,” presented March 5, 2020.

by James A. Bacon

In late 2017, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) installed tolled express lanes on the congested inside-the-Beltway segment of Interstate 66. Planners hoped the tolls would discourage commuters from driving solo, and surplus toll revenues would be used to expand bus and rail alternatives. There was a frenzy of media coverage in the early days when dynamically set toll prices pushed past $47 for an inbound rush-hour commute, but the fever soon abated.

The Northern Virginia Transportation Commission (NVTC) decided to revisit the issue two years later. A new study has concluded that I-66 inside the Beltway “moved people more efficiently” in 2019 than it did in 2015 before the tolls were installed.

The total number of people traveling inbound during morning rush hour increased by 1.2% while the associated number of vehicles decreased by 2.7%, indicating a shift in the share of trips made by transit and HOV. Overall, 65% of the corridor’s morning rush-hour inbound trips were made by transit or HOV in early 2019, compared to 64% in early 2016.

While the traffic trends budged in a positive direction, the change was incremental. Despite incentives created by the tolls to switch, commuting patterns remain largely the same, as can be seen in the graph above.

The limited change in commuting patterns that has occurred has consisted mainly of people shifting from solo driving (single occupancy vehicles, or SOVs) to shared vehicles and mass transit. HOV (high-occupancy vehicles) has gained 1.2 percentage points of market share, while bus and mass transit have gained o.4 percentage points of market share.

The state has been reinvesting most of its toll revenues in mass transit, particularly commuter bus. (The study provides no dollar figures, so it is difficult to gauge the magnitude of that investment.) Rail has increased its share of transit ridership slightly, from 82.5% to 82.8%, while commuter bus has climbed from 9.3% to 11.4%. At the same time, the local bus share of transit ridership has declined from 8.2% to 5.8%.

The NVTC study asked an important question: Does the investment in commuter bus complete Metrorail or steal passengers from Metrorail? If the program was just spurring riders to switch from one mass-transit mode to another, the investment would be of questionable value. However, the study concluded, “Commuter bus services are not taking riders away from Metrorail. Rather, commuter bus services and Metrorail are serving different markets, and both have enjoyed ridership gains over the last two years.”

Bacon’s bottom line: This analysis is welcome. The study answers questions that the NVTC and VDOT need to be asking. But it seems curiously deficient. It does not reveal how much money the inside-the-Beltway tolls have raised, nor how much has been invested in transportation options. Thus, we have no way to determine if they money is being well spent. The reality could be like the old joke:

Wife: “Honey, I saved a $100 buying these new shoes on sale!”
Husband: How much did they cost?
Wife: Oh, five hundred dollars.
Husband: smacks forehead.

Still, overall, the tolls do seem to be working as advertised. Across the Washington metropolitan region, traffic congestion is getting worse, not better. By contrast, it is improving incrementally inside the Beltway. That’s saying something.

James A. Bacon

Share this article

(comments below)

Comments

66 responses to “How Are Those Inside-the-Beltway Toll Roads Working Out?”

Dick Hall-Sizemore

March 4, 2020

Based on all the complaining that I heard, I am surprised that the decrease in number of vehicles was not larger. I doubt if the decrease will continue. The tolls have been in place long enough for folks to get used to them and view them as just one of those necessary everyday costs that are absorbed.

There is one aspect that this data could not capture–how many new drivers have chosen not to take the toll road. There has been an increase in population since 2015. If the tolls had not been put in place, then the number of vehicles would have probably increased, due at least to the increase in population. So, the tolls resulted not only in an absolute decrease from the 2015 count, but they also kept the count from increasing. We just don’t know what that probable increase may have been. In summary, one could say that the effect of the tolls on traffic volume was greater than the 2.7 percent decrease from the 2015 traffic count.

Log in to Reply
TooManyTaxes

March 4, 2020

What I understand that is one of the key benefits of the program has been to make it very hard to cheat. I believe some have said that as many as 20-25% of the drivers did not have HOV-2 and were cheating by driving solo. Enforcement occurred only on exit ramps. So it didn’t happen much.

Now everyone needs the toll pass that can be clicked off when there are two passengers or pays the toll when there aren’t. I think VDOT’s cameras take photos of the occupants?

Toss in the added eastbound lane to Glebe Road and, to me, this sounds like a reasonable plan. I do, however, think some significant number of solo drivers now take Routes 123 & 50 as well as Lee Highway. Traffic looks worse on 123 but I have not seen any data.

Log in to Reply
Reed Fawell 3rd

March 4, 2020

“If it is a conspiracy among public officials – it’s massive.”

Don’t believe a word the government says is happening at Tysons, and don’t believe Jim’s latest warmed over hash found here at recent post Virginia’s New Suburbia.

Plus, don’t believe these N. Va. tolls happened by accidents, or acts of God, or bad luck. These tolls are a direct result of intentional actions of leaders including those in government, and their crony allies. Here’s my view of how Tyson’s got built to become the monster that today is forcing all these tolls on the good and innocent people all over the region and East Coast who now are daily victims of their own government and its crony allies:

Tyson’s Corner’s, the traffic monster’s early years, 1960 to 2000.

Should one take two steps back from the map and only then can one imagine how Tyson’s Corner’s core sits within its surroundings. For then one might see a small island core of a city stuffed and forcibly shaped into a triangle’s apex that was wedged into the intersection of a complex of super highways that include two legs of Tyson’s core comprising 3 sides, the 3rd being the triangle’s base roughly south of Virginia Route 7 between Capital Beltway (495) and Dulles Toll Road (267).

The superhighway called the beltway opened in 1961 around DC was orginally meant to serve heavy interstate traffic from Maine to Florida, and all traffic in between that, heading north or south, wanted to avoid DC.

The second leg of super highway hemming in Tyson’s triangle, opened in 1984, is a state toll road built alongside the Federally owned Dulles Access Road. That toll road was meant to serve the heavy state and interstate regional traffic that Fairfax County intended to generate going east and west to serve its already planned and rapidly growing commercial corridor to be anchored by Tyson’s on its east end thence west past Reston to Dulles Airport at edge of Virginia’s Piedmont.

And so, to anchor, fuel and feed all this enormous explosion of rapid westward growth and gain its own enormous benefit from that westward expansion, the Tyson’s Triangular core as built was expressly designed to be a massive traffic magnet that would draw in tens of thousand of cars with workers and shoppers from all over the region to shop, work and spend money in Tyson’s Core, then leave that same day by car for homes located somewhere else often as much as 60 to 90 miles distant.

This development strategy was expressively designed to maximize profits and revenues from Tyson’s that flowed into this builders and into Fairfax while minimizing its and their costs to gain those massive flows of money generated by Tyson’s core.

Why? And how?

Dense offices and retail malls built suburban style on cheap open land maximizes state and developer cash flow and revenues, while it minimizes infrastructure costs, savings that range from no sidewalks to no schools, no kids or families. All these “excess costs” would be paid for by outside jurisdictions, including DC and numerous other counties in Virginia, and Maryland. These massive cost savings also started with massively costly but federally funded roads that made Tyson’s, so isolated and rural before, suddenly convenient to other jurisdictions that housed Tyson’s workers and shoppers and schooled their kids in mostly residential areas.

Thus Tyson’s was filled as rapidly as possible with suburban mid-rise and high rise office buildings, along with two very large regional shopping malls, two hotels and more strip shopping commercial along its few interior roads that had access to lands outside its triangular core. And so to achieve this mission to built a transient commuter city jammed with people by day, and empty at night, relatively little residential and local commercial was built in Tyson’s core, so few were able to stay overnight, or live there after dark.

This gross imbalance of mixed uses created a massive demand for daily commuter and shopper traffic. Most all were out of town shoppers and workers, drawn into Tyson’s daily from across the region outside Tyson’s (in all directions) who after coming to work or shop in Tyson’s over a massive road network had to leave town most every evening over the very same roads. So thousands then were flushed back out onto jammed road networks across the region, into Maryland, DC, and many other Virginia counties. Going both ways, huge daily waves of commuter traffic mixed into and piled atop other regional and interstate traffic on the Capital Beltway and Dulles Toll Road. This massive Tyson’s traffic mixed in suddenly with shoppers and office workers throughout the entire DC region, plus vacationers traveling from Maine to Florida, and from many places in between, along with the new regional and local traffic in the Dulles toll road generated by DC, Tysons, Reston and the rest of newly built out Dulles Corridor and and lands beyond, farther west.

Paradoxically, these superhighways and Rt. 7 quickly confined and isolated Tyson’s corner from its original residential and commercial neighborhoods on all its three sides, thus severely limiting and constricting local access into and out of Tyson’s. What had been touted world class access, became bottlenecks that straggled an entire region.

Problems then compounded all over. For example on Tyson’s third side, the triangle’s base, the already limited local access through the main street of a dense linear town gridlocked the town, long before it crossed Tyson’s Triangle otherwise stoppered there by dense suburban and park buffered walls.

These are the eggs that Tyson’s and its region must unscramble to fix the traffic debacle Tyson’s imposes on everyone who touches it, and gets close to it. And until then, which likely will never happen, innocent working people trying to work to feed their families and themselves will be charged massive tolls to be greatly delayed, and inconvenienced up to several hours a day stymied by gridlock.

Log in to Reply
1. James A. Bacon
  
  March 4, 2020
  
  Reed, I share your prognosis of what went wrong at Tysons. And I share your vision of what Northern Virginia should strive to be. The problem is getting from here to there. The region is captive to its past choices.
  
  It would be wonderful Tysons could get a chance, like Arlington, to reinvent its land use patterns. But as bad as Arlington got in the 1960s, it never mucked up things as badly as Fairfax County did at Tysons. Once you’ve built out the infrastructure and laid out the parcels, and then built on the parcels as poorly as was done in Tysons, retrofitting is extraordinarily costly.
  
  The billion-dollar question is: Can repairing Tysons generate enough tax revenue to pay for the repairs? Or will it be a huge fiscal sink?
  
  Log in to Reply
LarrytheG

March 4, 2020

Now DJ – there you go again:

Charlotte HAS toll lanes guy

In fact, MORE major urban areas have toll lanes than NOT and more are planned for cities that do not yet have them.

This is silly.

Now we’re yammering about NoVa funding RoVa and that’s the reason the toll lanes are “wrong”.

Check this list of toll lanes – it’s a LONG LIST!

https://www.interstate-guide.com/toll-roads/

and the thing is – you NoVa folks are drowning yourselves in traffic – don’t blame RoVa!

Log in to Reply
1. djrippert
  
  March 5, 2020
  
  Jeez you’re dense. I mean really dense. The only complaints I have about Virginia’s tolls is that they are too high and unfairly impact only a tiny percentage of where congestion occurs. The big issue is that the money to expand roads isn’t spent. Plenty of tax money is raised in NoVa – through taxes, tolls, surcharges, etc. The money flows to Richmond and is wasted by the ongoing RICO violation known as our General Assembly. Northam splashes some around to assuage his blackface guilt, Republicans want to fund subsidized rural broadband to buy votes in Hooterville, a big pile will be waster on expanded rail from Richmond to DC, Tidewater checks in with a few hundred million wasted on Rt 460 – the road to nowhere. Ronald Reagan once said, “There are no easy answers but there are simple answers.” The simple answer to NoVa’s congestion problem is to keep more of the tax money taken from NoVa in NoVa and use that money to expand / improve roads. Richmond may have to live without rail to DC (or raise debt and pay it off with the imaginary revenues from the rail), Hooterville may have to go without super high bandwidth internet, Northam might not be able to appoint any more diversity teams, etc.
  
  Log in to Reply
  1. LarrytheG
    
    March 5, 2020
    
    not dense – willing to recognize reality… big difference
    
    say tolls are “too high” is ignorance of dynamic pricing which is the basis of variable tolling. If the tolls were less, they’d not be effective at reducing congestion. So.. go learn about congestion tolling before you say “dense”!
    
    In terms of money, NoVa is one of only two jurisdictions in the state that have their own regional taxes that stay in NoVa and don’t go to Richmond. You also get the tolls!
    
    The REALITY is that transportation improvements in urban areas are ungodly expensive – 5-10 times what they cost in less dense places.
    
    That’s on you – not RoVa. You do get your share of the gas tax revenues, in fact, more than your share from what I see.
    
    but go read up on congestion tolling.. first…, it works EXACTLY the same way that gasoline prices work and other basic commodities.
    
    Log in to Reply
Dick Hall-Sizemore

March 4, 2020

Based on all the complaining that I heard, I am surprised that the decrease in number of vehicles was not larger. I doubt if the decrease will continue. The tolls have been in place long enough for folks to get used to them and view them as just one of those necessary everyday costs that are absorbed.

There is one aspect that this data could not capture–how many new drivers have chosen not to take the toll road. There has been an increase in population since 2015. If the tolls had not been put in place, then the number of vehicles would have probably increased, due at least to the increase in population. So, the tolls resulted not only in an absolute decrease from the 2015 count, but they also kept the count from increasing. We just don’t know what that probable increase may have been. In summary, one could say that the effect of the tolls on traffic volume was greater than the 2.7 percent decrease from the 2015 traffic count.

Log in to Reply
LarrytheG

March 4, 2020

The money collected is not the main thing. They’re trying to use the tolls to manage congestion – to shape it so that they keep gridlock at bay and maintain some level of “through-put”. That’s why you see them also measuring how many people move and how quickly.

This is a funny issue because it’s often Conservatives who vehemently oppose the tolling – even though the tolling is a Heritage Foundation idea.

Time lost in traffic – time delay has a real cost – it’s often touted when talking about the “cost” of congestion and many folks argue that the “solution” is more lanes but that’s been a fail from the get go.

More lanes encourages more people to solo-commute.

And more lanes, even if they are feasible, which they are not on a lot of urban roads like I-66 – are ungodly expensive – costing 10 times what a normal road might cost.

So the ONLY “solution” that actually does work is congestion tolling. Not fixed tolls – but tolls that vary in price by the severity of the congestion.

It works just like airline tickets or cellphone minutes do. People shift their habits to avoid the costs and the roads, airplanes and cell phone towers avoid gridlock and maintain functionality.

Log in to Reply
LarrytheG

March 4, 2020

The money collected is not the main thing. They’re trying to use the tolls to manage congestion – to shape it so that they keep gridlock at bay and maintain some level of “through-put”. That’s why you see them also measuring how many people move and how quickly.

This is a funny issue because it’s often Conservatives who vehemently oppose the tolling – even though the tolling is a Heritage Foundation idea.

Time lost in traffic – time delay has a real cost – it’s often touted when talking about the “cost” of congestion and many folks argue that the “solution” is more lanes but that’s been a fail from the get go.

More lanes encourages more people to solo-commute.

And more lanes, even if they are feasible, which they are not on a lot of urban roads like I-66 – are ungodly expensive – costing 10 times what a normal road might cost.

So the ONLY “solution” that actually does work is congestion tolling. Not fixed tolls – but tolls that vary in price by the severity of the congestion.

It works just like airline tickets or cellphone minutes do. People shift their habits to avoid the costs and the roads, airplanes and cell phone towers avoid gridlock and maintain functionality.

Log in to Reply
TooManyTaxes

March 4, 2020

What I understand that is one of the key benefits of the program has been to make it very hard to cheat. I believe some have said that as many as 20-25% of the drivers did not have HOV-2 and were cheating by driving solo. Enforcement occurred only on exit ramps. So it didn’t happen much.

Now everyone needs the toll pass that can be clicked off when there are two passengers or pays the toll when there aren’t. I think VDOT’s cameras take photos of the occupants?

Toss in the added eastbound lane to Glebe Road and, to me, this sounds like a reasonable plan. I do, however, think some significant number of solo drivers now take Routes 123 & 50 as well as Lee Highway. Traffic looks worse on 123 but I have not seen any data.

Log in to Reply
LarrytheG

March 4, 2020

The tolling process is still evolving but the main point is not to make money but to shape congestion levels so as to keep the roads moving by discouraging more solo cars when they are full.

There still are quite a few cheaters. They are using cameras and State Police to get them… but it’s more like the State Police catching speeders… they get a few then others escape.

Log in to Reply
LarrytheG

March 4, 2020

The tolling process is still evolving but the main point is not to make money but to shape congestion levels so as to keep the roads moving by discouraging more solo cars when they are full.

There still are quite a few cheaters. They are using cameras and State Police to get them… but it’s more like the State Police catching speeders… they get a few then others escape.

Log in to Reply
djrippert

March 4, 2020

I love it when people from outside NoVa opine on NoVa.

“By contrast, it is improving incrementally inside the Beltway. That’s saying something.”

That might be true if I66 were the only road “inside the beltway”. How many of the vehicles that once used I66 are now using surface streets to avoid the tolls? Also, when tolls from the Dulles Toll Road were used to fund Metro Jim Bacon and other conservatives howled. Where is the indignation at I66 tolls being used for buses?

“More lanes encourages more people to solo-commute.”

“Lanes” are infrastructure. Like sewage treatment plants, natural gas lines and water pipes. When an area experiences population growth more infrastructure (including “lanes”) is required. If you want to stop building roads in Northern Virginia then stop allowing development in Northern Virginia. Nobody up here would care other than the development and real estate communities (and the politicians they buy with unlimited campaign contributions).

“And more lanes, even if they are feasible, which they are not on a lot of urban roads like I-66 … ”

Another lane in each direction is easily feasible on I66 inside the Beltway. The space is there but Terry McAuliffe didn’t want to antagonize the Democratic base in Arlington who don’t want I66 widened inside the beltway. However, Terry is gone now (for a while at least) and the infeasible widening of I66 is happening …

http://inside.transform66.org/about_the_project/i-66_eastbound_widening.asp

Log in to Reply
1. LarrytheG
  
  March 4, 2020
  
  Nope. Lanes are not just infrastructure no more than airplanes at airports are and too many want to fly when there is not enough “airport” or places and the solution is to price them according to demand.
  
  It has nothing to do with “inside” NoVa no more than anyone who might be “inside” a terminal – opining on their “better” perspective.
  
  Congestion Tolling is done worldwide now. Beyond NoVa – beyond the beltway and it works the very same way that prices on airline seats work – which DJ – you know well how that works. Are you saying it does not?
  
  You cannot build “more lanes” when you are out of places to do it.
  
  that’s the inane thing about the “more lanes” argument. There are SOME places where you can add lanes but then they go to places where you cannot add more lanes without tearing down buildings – private infrastructure if you will. If we did what the “more lane” folks advocated – we’d be tearing down “infrastructure” to replace it with “lanes”.
  
  sorry – you’re losing on this. Tolling is here to stay just like pricing airline seats according to demand – is.
  
  Log in to Reply
  1. djrippert
    
    March 4, 2020
    
    Larry, there you go again.
    
    You said it was infeasible to widen I66 when it is being widened right now. If you want to argue a point first get your facts straight.
    
    I’ve debunked your airline analogy before. As demand increases do you really think airlines refuse to buy more planes to meet that demand? As more flights are scheduled do you really think municipalities refuse to build new airports or enlarge existing airports? They’re building a major expansion at Reagan Airport right now Larry. Look up Payne Field in Seattle or the $4b expansion of LaGuardia, the $3.6b expansion in Salt Lake City, the new billion dollar terminal in New Orleans. The list goes on.
    
    You live in a fantasy world where airlines only grow by increasing ticket prices. That may be how they handle near term balancing of supply and demand but they are also constantly expanding their fleets.
    
    https://www.aviationtoday.com/2018/03/20/faa-forecasts-strong-growth-aviation-next-two-decades/
    
    “The FAA forecasts that the number of U.S. airline passengers will increase from 840.8 million in 2017 to 1.28 billion in 2038, a growth of more than 50%.”
    
    More demand, more passengers, more flights, more airplanes, more runways, more terminals, more (and bigger) airports. In other words, more infrastructure.
    
    Log in to Reply
    1. LarrytheG
      
      March 4, 2020
      
      it’s the LAST widening and VDOT is putting tolls in now because no more will be possible.
      
      And NO, I did NOT say they won’t buy more planes or build more airports – I said that they manage the seats they have available now by pricing them according to demand – and they do – that’s not debunked! It’s totally true.
      
      With both airports and lanes – it gets harder and harder to do and more and more expensive.
      
      Sure you could add even more lanes to I-66 if you’re willing to tear down buildings – take them off the tax rolls and pay an ungodly price for them but that would eat more dramatically eat up your highway money.
      
      Even when you add lanes – you do not get system-wide, network-wide capacity. You get limited capacity in one place which just send more traffic to other bottlenecks.
      
      They’re going to add lanes to the western beltway over the river and when they do – they’re going to be tolled.
      
      Maryland is going to toll some of it’s other roads.
      
      You’re fighting a losing battle guy.
      
      and like I said, it’s weird , because folks who say they are Conservative usually tout the supply/demand realities where
      price controls.
      
      Works for gasoline also – you may have noticed.
      
      Log in to Reply
2. Dick Hall-Sizemore
  
  March 4, 2020
  
  With the new transportation bill now in conference committee, those I-66 tolls will not only be used for buses, but for the expansion of passenger rail between Washington and Richmond (thank you).
  
  Log in to Reply
  1. LarrytheG
    
    March 4, 2020
    
    Yes – they will expand VRE Commuter rail and add a second bridge to the so-called “Long Bridge” which is a bottleneck to CSX, Amrak and VRE.
    
    ” A proposal to expand the Long Bridge over the Potomac River, which officials say is key to the region’s growing rail needs, appears to be moving forward.
    
    The project would double capacity on the bridge to handle more commuter and intercity rail service, as well as expected increases in freight transportation over the coming decades. Officials in the District and Virginia say the investment would address a bottleneck in the system as trains funnel from three tracks to the two-track bridge, and make possible the growth of passenger and commuter rail service across the Potomac.
    
    Expanding the Long Bridge is key to region’s growing rail needs, officials say
    
    The plan favored by DDOT and FRA would keep the Long Bridge and build a second two-track bridge next to it to create a four-track crossing. Construction would take five years and cost about $1.9 billion. Earlier estimates had put the cost at $1.3 billion to $1.6 billion.
    
    The preferred alternative, however, is the most cost-effective of those under consideration. It also lessens the impact on the environment, historic property and parkland in the area, according to the agencies.
    
    As part of the project, a stand-alone bike and pedestrian bridge would be built upstream from the new rail bridge, allowing people to walk or bike across the Potomac River between the D.C. waterfront and Crystal City in Arlington.
    
    A second option still under consideration is to build a pair of two-track bridges to replace the Long Bridge. That option would cost up to $2.8 billion — and would take up to eight years and three months of construction, according to government estimates.
    
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2019/09/11/plan-long-bridge-expansion-moves-forward/
    
    Adding a 3rd rail between Washington and Richmond is not going to be easy – there is substantial opposition …in some places. Fredericksburg is okay with it, in part because their decaying city station will be addressed.
    
    Log in to Reply
  2. djrippert
    
    March 4, 2020
    
    There is absolutely no reason for expanded passenger rail between Richmond and Washington. Virtually nobody commutes from Richmond to / from DC. This is a complete boondoggle meant to make the citizens of the failed city of Richmond feel better about themselves.
    
    Log in to Reply
3. James A. Bacon
  
  March 4, 2020
  
  Here’s the problem with building more lanes in Northern Virginia. You’re running out of space to add lanes. At some point, you’ve utilized all the space in the right of way. Then, to expand the right of way, you have to condemn commercial land for the most part, which can get very expensive. At that point, you have to figure out how to get more capacity out of those lanes, which requires tolls roads, shared ridership, and commuter buses…. It would be helpful, too, as Ed Risse preached, to create a better balance of jobs, housing, retail and amenities so people don’t have to drive so far. But that’s a whole different debate.
  
  Log in to Reply
  1. djrippert
    
    March 4, 2020
    
    Not true. I heard that the Beltway couldn’t be expanded. There was no room. It would cost too much. It would take too long. Then a private company took over and voila – there was an expanded Beltway. The new road costs a fortune to drive on but as soon as the job was taken away from the usual suspects in Richmond it was quickly built. There is plenty of room for an additional lane in both directions on I66 but, if built, there won’t be money for downstate boondoggles like subsidized rural broadband. Gov Hogan has committed to expand the beltway in Maryland. He must be magical.
    
    Every intersection on Rt 7 in Fairfax and Loudoun counties could be turned into overpasses. But that would cost money.
    
    This has nothing to do with space and everything to do with Richmond wanting to milk NoVa for hare brained schemes downstate.
    
    Log in to Reply
    1. LarrytheG
      
      March 4, 2020
      
      You can’t add more unless you take right-of-way from the sides AND rebuild virtually every bridge and overpass and interchange. Just the reality.
      
      the next time you go on an interstate – take note of the overpasses and interchanges and see if you could fit new lanes under them without rebuilding them.
      
      You’re a smart guy DJ – take a look at those overpasses…
      
      quite a few of them are going to have to be re-built for the I-66 toll lanes.
      
      I know.. it’s Richmond’s fault that they didn’t build them wide enough, right?
      
      😉
      
      Log in to Reply
djrippert

March 4, 2020

I love it when people from outside NoVa opine on NoVa.

“By contrast, it is improving incrementally inside the Beltway. That’s saying something.”

That might be true if I66 were the only road “inside the beltway”. How many of the vehicles that once used I66 are now using surface streets to avoid the tolls? Also, when tolls from the Dulles Toll Road were used to fund Metro Jim Bacon and other conservatives howled. Where is the indignation at I66 tolls being used for buses?

“More lanes encourages more people to solo-commute.”

“Lanes” are infrastructure. Like sewage treatment plants, natural gas lines and water pipes. When an area experiences population growth more infrastructure (including “lanes”) is required. If you want to stop building roads in Northern Virginia then stop allowing development in Northern Virginia. Nobody up here would care other than the development and real estate communities (and the politicians they buy with unlimited campaign contributions).

“And more lanes, even if they are feasible, which they are not on a lot of urban roads like I-66 … ”

Another lane in each direction is easily feasible on I66 inside the Beltway. The space is there but Terry McAuliffe didn’t want to antagonize the Democratic base in Arlington who don’t want I66 widened inside the beltway. However, Terry is gone now (for a while at least) and the infeasible widening of I66 is happening …

http://inside.transform66.org/about_the_project/i-66_eastbound_widening.asp

Log in to Reply
1. LarrytheG
  
  March 4, 2020
  
  Nope. Lanes are not just infrastructure no more than airplanes at airports are and too many want to fly when there is not enough “airport” or places and the solution is to price them according to demand.
  
  It has nothing to do with “inside” NoVa no more than anyone who might be “inside” a terminal – opining on their “better” perspective.
  
  Congestion Tolling is done worldwide now. Beyond NoVa – beyond the beltway and it works the very same way that prices on airline seats work – which DJ – you know well how that works. Are you saying it does not?
  
  You cannot build “more lanes” when you are out of places to do it.
  
  that’s the inane thing about the “more lanes” argument. There are SOME places where you can add lanes but then they go to places where you cannot add more lanes without tearing down buildings – private infrastructure if you will. If we did what the “more lane” folks advocated – we’d be tearing down “infrastructure” to replace it with “lanes”.
  
  sorry – you’re losing on this. Tolling is here to stay just like pricing airline seats according to demand – is.
  
  Log in to Reply
  1. djrippert
    
    March 4, 2020
    
    Larry, there you go again.
    
    You said it was infeasible to widen I66 when it is being widened right now. If you want to argue a point first get your facts straight.
    
    I’ve debunked your airline analogy before. As demand increases do you really think airlines refuse to buy more planes to meet that demand? As more flights are scheduled do you really think municipalities refuse to build new airports or enlarge existing airports? They’re building a major expansion at Reagan Airport right now Larry. Look up Payne Field in Seattle or the $4b expansion of LaGuardia, the $3.6b expansion in Salt Lake City, the new billion dollar terminal in New Orleans. The list goes on.
    
    You live in a fantasy world where airlines only grow by increasing ticket prices. That may be how they handle near term balancing of supply and demand but they are also constantly expanding their fleets.
    
    https://www.aviationtoday.com/2018/03/20/faa-forecasts-strong-growth-aviation-next-two-decades/
    
    “The FAA forecasts that the number of U.S. airline passengers will increase from 840.8 million in 2017 to 1.28 billion in 2038, a growth of more than 50%.”
    
    More demand, more passengers, more flights, more airplanes, more runways, more terminals, more (and bigger) airports. In other words, more infrastructure.
    
    Log in to Reply
    1. LarrytheG
      
      March 4, 2020
      
      it’s the LAST widening and VDOT is putting tolls in now because no more will be possible.
      
      And NO, I did NOT say they won’t buy more planes or build more airports – I said that they manage the seats they have available now by pricing them according to demand – and they do – that’s not debunked! It’s totally true.
      
      With both airports and lanes – it gets harder and harder to do and more and more expensive.
      
      Sure you could add even more lanes to I-66 if you’re willing to tear down buildings – take them off the tax rolls and pay an ungodly price for them but that would eat more dramatically eat up your highway money.
      
      Even when you add lanes – you do not get system-wide, network-wide capacity. You get limited capacity in one place which just send more traffic to other bottlenecks.
      
      They’re going to add lanes to the western beltway over the river and when they do – they’re going to be tolled.
      
      Maryland is going to toll some of it’s other roads.
      
      You’re fighting a losing battle guy.
      
      and like I said, it’s weird , because folks who say they are Conservative usually tout the supply/demand realities where
      price controls.
      
      Works for gasoline also – you may have noticed.
      
      Log in to Reply
2. Dick Hall-Sizemore
  
  March 4, 2020
  
  With the new transportation bill now in conference committee, those I-66 tolls will not only be used for buses, but for the expansion of passenger rail between Washington and Richmond (thank you).
  
  Log in to Reply
  1. LarrytheG
    
    March 4, 2020
    
    Yes – they will expand VRE Commuter rail and add a second bridge to the so-called “Long Bridge” which is a bottleneck to CSX, Amrak and VRE.
    
    ” A proposal to expand the Long Bridge over the Potomac River, which officials say is key to the region’s growing rail needs, appears to be moving forward.
    
    The project would double capacity on the bridge to handle more commuter and intercity rail service, as well as expected increases in freight transportation over the coming decades. Officials in the District and Virginia say the investment would address a bottleneck in the system as trains funnel from three tracks to the two-track bridge, and make possible the growth of passenger and commuter rail service across the Potomac.
    
    Expanding the Long Bridge is key to region’s growing rail needs, officials say
    
    The plan favored by DDOT and FRA would keep the Long Bridge and build a second two-track bridge next to it to create a four-track crossing. Construction would take five years and cost about $1.9 billion. Earlier estimates had put the cost at $1.3 billion to $1.6 billion.
    
    The preferred alternative, however, is the most cost-effective of those under consideration. It also lessens the impact on the environment, historic property and parkland in the area, according to the agencies.
    
    As part of the project, a stand-alone bike and pedestrian bridge would be built upstream from the new rail bridge, allowing people to walk or bike across the Potomac River between the D.C. waterfront and Crystal City in Arlington.
    
    A second option still under consideration is to build a pair of two-track bridges to replace the Long Bridge. That option would cost up to $2.8 billion — and would take up to eight years and three months of construction, according to government estimates.
    
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2019/09/11/plan-long-bridge-expansion-moves-forward/
    
    Adding a 3rd rail between Washington and Richmond is not going to be easy – there is substantial opposition …in some places. Fredericksburg is okay with it, in part because their decaying city station will be addressed.
    
    Log in to Reply
  2. djrippert
    
    March 4, 2020
    
    There is absolutely no reason for expanded passenger rail between Richmond and Washington. Virtually nobody commutes from Richmond to / from DC. This is a complete boondoggle meant to make the citizens of the failed city of Richmond feel better about themselves.
    
    Log in to Reply
3. James A. Bacon
  
  March 4, 2020
  
  Here’s the problem with building more lanes in Northern Virginia. You’re running out of space to add lanes. At some point, you’ve utilized all the space in the right of way. Then, to expand the right of way, you have to condemn commercial land for the most part, which can get very expensive. At that point, you have to figure out how to get more capacity out of those lanes, which requires tolls roads, shared ridership, and commuter buses…. It would be helpful, too, as Ed Risse preached, to create a better balance of jobs, housing, retail and amenities so people don’t have to drive so far. But that’s a whole different debate.
  
  Log in to Reply
  1. djrippert
    
    March 4, 2020
    
    Not true. I heard that the Beltway couldn’t be expanded. There was no room. It would cost too much. It would take too long. Then a private company took over and voila – there was an expanded Beltway. The new road costs a fortune to drive on but as soon as the job was taken away from the usual suspects in Richmond it was quickly built. There is plenty of room for an additional lane in both directions on I66 but, if built, there won’t be money for downstate boondoggles like subsidized rural broadband. Gov Hogan has committed to expand the beltway in Maryland. He must be magical.
    
    Every intersection on Rt 7 in Fairfax and Loudoun counties could be turned into overpasses. But that would cost money.
    
    This has nothing to do with space and everything to do with Richmond wanting to milk NoVa for hare brained schemes downstate.
    
    Log in to Reply
    1. LarrytheG
      
      March 4, 2020
      
      You can’t add more unless you take right-of-way from the sides AND rebuild virtually every bridge and overpass and interchange. Just the reality.
      
      the next time you go on an interstate – take note of the overpasses and interchanges and see if you could fit new lanes under them without rebuilding them.
      
      You’re a smart guy DJ – take a look at those overpasses…
      
      quite a few of them are going to have to be re-built for the I-66 toll lanes.
      
      I know.. it’s Richmond’s fault that they didn’t build them wide enough, right?
      
      😉
      
      Log in to Reply
Reed Fawell 3rd

March 4, 2020

Why do some folks relish the government stripping ever more money out of the pockets of hard working people just for trying to get to work to support their families, while that same government forces ever more other hard working people now near bankruptcy off the toll roads into gridlock and traffic wars on residential neighborhood’s toll free streets?

It never ends, just get worse and worse!

Log in to Reply
Reed Fawell 3rd

March 4, 2020

Why do some folks relish the government stripping ever more money out of the pockets of hard working people just for trying to get to work to support their families, while that same government forces ever more other hard working people now near bankruptcy off the toll roads into gridlock and traffic wars on residential neighborhood’s toll free streets?

It never ends, just get worse and worse!

Log in to Reply
LarrytheG

March 4, 2020

I’m not an advocate for tolls because I hate people or like to see them pay more taxes.

It’s a simple matter of capacity and no matter which path you take – it’s going to cost more money. If you want to build more lanes, it’s going to be very costly because urban roads use land – even when it is undeveloped that is very expensive.

What do you get with those more expensive lanes? You don’t get less congestion or free-flowing conditions – far from it.

It’s not just NoVa – around the USA from New York to North Caroline to Georgia to Florida to Texas to California to Washington State to Chicago – they all have toll lanes and they are all building more toll lanes because adding lanes does not work and actually costs more than building the toll lanes.

I don’t like toll lanes either neither do I like higher taxes – but in this case, it’s a question of which is the lesser evil as well as some level of ignorance with respect to what the choices really are.

All of us like to drive solo. We prefer that. We hate public transit but in urban areas at rush hour – around the country- it’s become untenable.

If it is a conspiracy among public officials – it’s massive.

Log in to Reply
LarrytheG

March 4, 2020

I’m not an advocate for tolls because I hate people or like to see them pay more taxes.

It’s a simple matter of capacity and no matter which path you take – it’s going to cost more money. If you want to build more lanes, it’s going to be very costly because urban roads use land – even when it is undeveloped that is very expensive.

What do you get with those more expensive lanes? You don’t get less congestion or free-flowing conditions – far from it.

It’s not just NoVa – around the USA from New York to North Caroline to Georgia to Florida to Texas to California to Washington State to Chicago – they all have toll lanes and they are all building more toll lanes because adding lanes does not work and actually costs more than building the toll lanes.

I don’t like toll lanes either neither do I like higher taxes – but in this case, it’s a question of which is the lesser evil as well as some level of ignorance with respect to what the choices really are.

All of us like to drive solo. We prefer that. We hate public transit but in urban areas at rush hour – around the country- it’s become untenable.

If it is a conspiracy among public officials – it’s massive.

Log in to Reply
Reed Fawell 3rd

March 4, 2020

“If it is a conspiracy among public officials – it’s massive.”

Don’t believe a word the government says is happening at Tysons, and don’t believe Jim’s latest warmed over hash found here at recent post Virginia’s New Suburbia.

Plus, don’t believe these N. Va. tolls happened by accidents, or acts of God, or bad luck. These tolls are a direct result of intentional actions of leaders including those in government, and their crony allies. Here’s my view of how Tyson’s got built to become the monster that today is forcing all these tolls on the good and innocent people all over the region and East Coast who now are daily victims of their own government and its crony allies:

Tyson’s Corner’s, the traffic monster’s early years, 1960 to 2000.

Should one take two steps back from the map and only then can one imagine how Tyson’s Corner’s core sits within its surroundings. For then one might see a small island core of a city stuffed and forcibly shaped into a triangle’s apex that was wedged into the intersection of a complex of super highways that include two legs of Tyson’s core comprising 3 sides, the 3rd being the triangle’s base roughly south of Virginia Route 7 between Capital Beltway (495) and Dulles Toll Road (267).

The superhighway called the beltway opened in 1961 around DC was orginally meant to serve heavy interstate traffic from Maine to Florida, and all traffic in between that, heading north or south, wanted to avoid DC.

The second leg of super highway hemming in Tyson’s triangle, opened in 1984, is a state toll road built alongside the Federally owned Dulles Access Road. That toll road was meant to serve the heavy state and interstate regional traffic that Fairfax County intended to generate going east and west to serve its already planned and rapidly growing commercial corridor to be anchored by Tyson’s on its east end thence west past Reston to Dulles Airport at edge of Virginia’s Piedmont.

And so, to anchor, fuel and feed all this enormous explosion of rapid westward growth and gain its own enormous benefit from that westward expansion, the Tyson’s Triangular core as built was expressly designed to be a massive traffic magnet that would draw in tens of thousand of cars with workers and shoppers from all over the region to shop, work and spend money in Tyson’s Core, then leave that same day by car for homes located somewhere else often as much as 60 to 90 miles distant.

This development strategy was expressively designed to maximize profits and revenues from Tyson’s that flowed into this builders and into Fairfax while minimizing its and their costs to gain those massive flows of money generated by Tyson’s core.

Why? And how?

Dense offices and retail malls built suburban style on cheap open land maximizes state and developer cash flow and revenues, while it minimizes infrastructure costs, savings that range from no sidewalks to no schools, no kids or families. All these “excess costs” would be paid for by outside jurisdictions, including DC and numerous other counties in Virginia, and Maryland. These massive cost savings also started with massively costly but federally funded roads that made Tyson’s, so isolated and rural before, suddenly convenient to other jurisdictions that housed Tyson’s workers and shoppers and schooled their kids in mostly residential areas.

Thus Tyson’s was filled as rapidly as possible with suburban mid-rise and high rise office buildings, along with two very large regional shopping malls, two hotels and more strip shopping commercial along its few interior roads that had access to lands outside its triangular core. And so to achieve this mission to built a transient commuter city jammed with people by day, and empty at night, relatively little residential and local commercial was built in Tyson’s core, so few were able to stay overnight, or live there after dark.

This gross imbalance of mixed uses created a massive demand for daily commuter and shopper traffic. Most all were out of town shoppers and workers, drawn into Tyson’s daily from across the region outside Tyson’s (in all directions) who after coming to work or shop in Tyson’s over a massive road network had to leave town most every evening over the very same roads. So thousands then were flushed back out onto jammed road networks across the region, into Maryland, DC, and many other Virginia counties. Going both ways, huge daily waves of commuter traffic mixed into and piled atop other regional and interstate traffic on the Capital Beltway and Dulles Toll Road. This massive Tyson’s traffic mixed in suddenly with shoppers and office workers throughout the entire DC region, plus vacationers traveling from Maine to Florida, and from many places in between, along with the new regional and local traffic in the Dulles toll road generated by DC, Tysons, Reston and the rest of newly built out Dulles Corridor and and lands beyond, farther west.

Paradoxically, these superhighways and Rt. 7 quickly confined and isolated Tyson’s corner from its original residential and commercial neighborhoods on all its three sides, thus severely limiting and constricting local access into and out of Tyson’s. What had been touted world class access, became bottlenecks that straggled an entire region.

Problems then compounded all over. For example on Tyson’s third side, the triangle’s base, the already limited local access through the main street of a dense linear town gridlocked the town, long before it crossed Tyson’s Triangle otherwise stoppered there by dense suburban and park buffered walls.

These are the eggs that Tyson’s and its region must unscramble to fix the traffic debacle Tyson’s imposes on everyone who touches it, and gets close to it. And until then, which likely will never happen, innocent working people trying to work to feed their families and themselves will be charged massive tolls to be greatly delayed, and inconvenienced up to several hours a day stymied by gridlock.

Log in to Reply
1. James A. Bacon
  
  March 4, 2020
  
  Reed, I share your prognosis of what went wrong at Tysons. And I share your vision of what Northern Virginia should strive to be. The problem is getting from here to there. The region is captive to its past choices.
  
  It would be wonderful Tysons could get a chance, like Arlington, to reinvent its land use patterns. But as bad as Arlington got in the 1960s, it never mucked up things as badly as Fairfax County did at Tysons. Once you’ve built out the infrastructure and laid out the parcels, and then built on the parcels as poorly as was done in Tysons, retrofitting is extraordinarily costly.
  
  The billion-dollar question is: Can repairing Tysons generate enough tax revenue to pay for the repairs? Or will it be a huge fiscal sink?
  
  Log in to Reply
LarrytheG

March 4, 2020

DJ – you’re a man that talks about NYC. Didn’t NYC also just add more tolls ?

Log in to Reply
1. djrippert
  
  March 4, 2020
  
  New York is almost as incompetently run as Virginia. People are leaving both the city and the state in droves.
  
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2019/09/05/new-yorkers-are-leaving-the-city-in-droves-heres-why-theyre-moving-and-where-theyre-going/#46f4dd5941ac
  
  Log in to Reply
  1. LarrytheG
    
    March 4, 2020
    
    oh – and going where? Texas? Florida? Where?
    
    Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) area toll roads
    Dallas North Tollway – DNT.
    President George Bush Turnpike – PGBT.
    President George Bush Turnpike – Western Extension.
    President George Bush Turnpike – Eastern Extension.
    Sam Rayburn Tollway – SRT.
    Chisholm Trail Parkway – CTP.
    Addison Airport Toll Road Tunnel.
    Mountain Creek Lake Toll Bridge.
    
    MAJOR TOLL ROADS IN FLORIDA (5)
    528 BEACHLINE EXPRESSWAY. • CAPE CANAVERAL • CELEBRATION • COCOA • KISSIMMEE • ORLANDO …
    ALLIGATOR ALLEY. • FORT LAUDERDALE • NAPLES • SUNRISE • WESTON …
    CENTRAL FLORIDA GREENEWAY. • AZALEA PARK • CELEBRATION • KISSIMMEE • ORLANDO • OVIEDO …
    FLORIDA’S TURNPIKE. • …
    SUNCOAST PARKWAY. •
    
    Colorado toll roads. E-470 is a 47-mile-long toll road is located in the suburbs of Denver Colorado and traverses the eastern portion of the Denver-Aurora Metropolitan Area – Douglas County, Parker, Arapahoe County, Aurora, Adams County, Brighton, Commerce City, Thorton. E-470 serves Denver International Airport.
    
    want more?
    
    Log in to Reply
LarrytheG

March 4, 2020

DJ – you’re a man that talks about NYC. Didn’t NYC also just add more tolls ?

Log in to Reply
1. djrippert
  
  March 4, 2020
  
  New York is almost as incompetently run as Virginia. People are leaving both the city and the state in droves.
  
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2019/09/05/new-yorkers-are-leaving-the-city-in-droves-heres-why-theyre-moving-and-where-theyre-going/#46f4dd5941ac
  
  Log in to Reply
  1. LarrytheG
    
    March 4, 2020
    
    oh – and going where? Texas? Florida? Where?
    
    Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) area toll roads
    Dallas North Tollway – DNT.
    President George Bush Turnpike – PGBT.
    President George Bush Turnpike – Western Extension.
    President George Bush Turnpike – Eastern Extension.
    Sam Rayburn Tollway – SRT.
    Chisholm Trail Parkway – CTP.
    Addison Airport Toll Road Tunnel.
    Mountain Creek Lake Toll Bridge.
    
    MAJOR TOLL ROADS IN FLORIDA (5)
    528 BEACHLINE EXPRESSWAY. • CAPE CANAVERAL • CELEBRATION • COCOA • KISSIMMEE • ORLANDO …
    ALLIGATOR ALLEY. • FORT LAUDERDALE • NAPLES • SUNRISE • WESTON …
    CENTRAL FLORIDA GREENEWAY. • AZALEA PARK • CELEBRATION • KISSIMMEE • ORLANDO • OVIEDO …
    FLORIDA’S TURNPIKE. • …
    SUNCOAST PARKWAY. •
    
    Colorado toll roads. E-470 is a 47-mile-long toll road is located in the suburbs of Denver Colorado and traverses the eastern portion of the Denver-Aurora Metropolitan Area – Douglas County, Parker, Arapahoe County, Aurora, Adams County, Brighton, Commerce City, Thorton. E-470 serves Denver International Airport.
    
    want more?
    
    Log in to Reply
LarrytheG

March 4, 2020

Now DJ – there you go again:

Charlotte HAS toll lanes guy

In fact, MORE major urban areas have toll lanes than NOT and more are planned for cities that do not yet have them.

This is silly.

Now we’re yammering about NoVa funding RoVa and that’s the reason the toll lanes are “wrong”.

Check this list of toll lanes – it’s a LONG LIST!

https://www.interstate-guide.com/toll-roads/

and the thing is – you NoVa folks are drowning yourselves in traffic – don’t blame RoVa!

Log in to Reply
1. djrippert
  
  March 5, 2020
  
  Jeez you’re dense. I mean really dense. The only complaints I have about Virginia’s tolls is that they are too high and unfairly impact only a tiny percentage of where congestion occurs. The big issue is that the money to expand roads isn’t spent. Plenty of tax money is raised in NoVa – through taxes, tolls, surcharges, etc. The money flows to Richmond and is wasted by the ongoing RICO violation known as our General Assembly. Northam splashes some around to assuage his blackface guilt, Republicans want to fund subsidized rural broadband to buy votes in Hooterville, a big pile will be waster on expanded rail from Richmond to DC, Tidewater checks in with a few hundred million wasted on Rt 460 – the road to nowhere. Ronald Reagan once said, “There are no easy answers but there are simple answers.” The simple answer to NoVa’s congestion problem is to keep more of the tax money taken from NoVa in NoVa and use that money to expand / improve roads. Richmond may have to live without rail to DC (or raise debt and pay it off with the imaginary revenues from the rail), Hooterville may have to go without super high bandwidth internet, Northam might not be able to appoint any more diversity teams, etc.
  
  Log in to Reply
  1. LarrytheG
    
    March 5, 2020
    
    not dense – willing to recognize reality… big difference
    
    say tolls are “too high” is ignorance of dynamic pricing which is the basis of variable tolling. If the tolls were less, they’d not be effective at reducing congestion. So.. go learn about congestion tolling before you say “dense”!
    
    In terms of money, NoVa is one of only two jurisdictions in the state that have their own regional taxes that stay in NoVa and don’t go to Richmond. You also get the tolls!
    
    The REALITY is that transportation improvements in urban areas are ungodly expensive – 5-10 times what they cost in less dense places.
    
    That’s on you – not RoVa. You do get your share of the gas tax revenues, in fact, more than your share from what I see.
    
    but go read up on congestion tolling.. first…, it works EXACTLY the same way that gasoline prices work and other basic commodities.
    
    Log in to Reply
LarrytheG

March 4, 2020

The one thing most all cities have in common is that they all totally underestimated the amount of traffic that would be generated from development.

Right now, today, it would probably take 30-40 lanes on the beltway to move all traffic at rush hour.

here it is:

https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/33817be64005b21405170b0527bb715bf102f6f6/c=0-0-984-556/local/-/media/2015/10/09/USATODAY/USATODAY/635799806185073714-Screen-Shot-2015-10-09-at-9.43.20-AM.jpg?auto=webp&format=pjpg&width=1200

Log in to Reply
1. djrippert
  
  March 5, 2020
  
  There are cities on the Top 15 Most Congested list and there are cities not on that list. Some of the cities not on the list are very large and growing very fast. Those cities manage to grow without creating chaos. They don’t use autonomous vehicles, flying saucers, Star Trek tele-transportation, mandatory car pooling or sophisticated subway systems. They build more road capacity.
  
  The City of Charlotte has almost exactly the same population density as Fairfax County.
  
  Log in to Reply
  1. Reed Fawell 3rd
    
    March 5, 2020
    
    Yes, and likely those cities have far better land use plans that better mix the uses in together so as to minimize traffic and traffic bottlenecks for whole varieties of different reasons, all interacting together, particularly important for long term healthy success.
    
    Log in to Reply
    1. LarrytheG
      
      March 5, 2020
      
      What has happened to virtually every city in the USA that has a beltway is that planners had no idea how beltways would change development patterns.
      
      Prior to beltways, most cities had what is called spoke and wheel roads and the further out on the spokes some lived, the more time it
      would take to get to the center where the jobs were. People lived on the “spoke” where their job was – most did not live on one spoke and commute to another spoke – until we did beltways.
      
      The onlly difference is most cities is where they are on the development continuum.
      
      Most bigger, more mature cities – got retrofitted beltways whereas smaller, still developing places got their beltways before they had matured like older cities.
      
      That’s what happened to NoVa and Tysons…
      
      Robert Moses is a good person to read about with respect to this.
      
      Log in to Reply
    2. Reed Fawell 3rd
      
      March 5, 2020
      
      I sent you to study Robert Moses years ago Larry. Finely mixed and tuned land uses abates traffic at its very core, not super highways that at their core create massive traffic and actively prevent its abatement and dilution by their killing off drainage, access and crossing points.
      
      In sum, fine tuned, aligned, crossed and calibrated mixed uses carefully sited amid matrix of small streets, intersections and roundabouts similarly chosen and carefully designed, are key to healthy cities.
      
      Jane Jacobs (another person I sent you to study years ago) first pointed this out in counterpoint to power mad city destroyer Robert Moses.
      
      Log in to Reply
      1. LarrytheG
        
        March 5, 2020
        
        I was well aware of Moses LONG BEFORE your “advice”, guy.
        
        Moses was not a “small street” person. He advocated running superhighways right through the middle of town but his time was also prior to the beltway thing.
        
        I’m familiar with Jane Jacobs but I’m not sure she has had any real impact on this issue – the issue being what happens to urban areas when beltways are built.
        
        Beltways have dramatically changed the way that development occurs in urban areas – the most important is the land-development far outstrips the highway capacity and fixing it is an after-the-fact exercise.
      2. Reed Fawell 3rd
        
        March 5, 2020
        
        Larry says” I was well aware of Moses LONG BEFORE your “advice”, guy.”
        
        Larry go to 1013 post “Smart Growth for Everyone” and start reading.
        
        https://www.baconsrebellion.com/smart-growth-for-everyone/#comment-61605
LarrytheG

March 4, 2020

The one thing most all cities have in common is that they all totally underestimated the amount of traffic that would be generated from development.

Right now, today, it would probably take 30-40 lanes on the beltway to move all traffic at rush hour.

here it is:

https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/33817be64005b21405170b0527bb715bf102f6f6/c=0-0-984-556/local/-/media/2015/10/09/USATODAY/USATODAY/635799806185073714-Screen-Shot-2015-10-09-at-9.43.20-AM.jpg?auto=webp&format=pjpg&width=1200

Log in to Reply
1. djrippert
  
  March 5, 2020
  
  There are cities on the Top 15 Most Congested list and there are cities not on that list. Some of the cities not on the list are very large and growing very fast. Those cities manage to grow without creating chaos. They don’t use autonomous vehicles, flying saucers, Star Trek tele-transportation, mandatory car pooling or sophisticated subway systems. They build more road capacity.
  
  The City of Charlotte has almost exactly the same population density as Fairfax County.
  
  Log in to Reply
  1. Reed Fawell 3rd
    
    March 5, 2020
    
    Yes, and likely those cities have far better land use plans that better mix the uses in together so as to minimize traffic and traffic bottlenecks for whole varieties of different reasons, all interacting together, particularly important for long term healthy success.
    
    Log in to Reply
    1. LarrytheG
      
      March 5, 2020
      
      What has happened to virtually every city in the USA that has a beltway is that planners had no idea how beltways would change development patterns.
      
      Prior to beltways, most cities had what is called spoke and wheel roads and the further out on the spokes some lived, the more time it
      would take to get to the center where the jobs were. People lived on the “spoke” where their job was – most did not live on one spoke and commute to another spoke – until we did beltways.
      
      The onlly difference is most cities is where they are on the development continuum.
      
      Most bigger, more mature cities – got retrofitted beltways whereas smaller, still developing places got their beltways before they had matured like older cities.
      
      That’s what happened to NoVa and Tysons…
      
      Robert Moses is a good person to read about with respect to this.
      
      Log in to Reply
    2. Reed Fawell 3rd
      
      March 5, 2020
      
      I sent you to study Robert Moses years ago Larry. Finely mixed and tuned land uses abates traffic at its very core, not super highways that at their core create massive traffic and actively prevent its abatement and dilution by their killing off drainage, access and crossing points.
      
      In sum, fine tuned, aligned, crossed and calibrated mixed uses carefully sited amid matrix of small streets, intersections and roundabouts similarly chosen and carefully designed, are key to healthy cities.
      
      Jane Jacobs (another person I sent you to study years ago) first pointed this out in counterpoint to power mad city destroyer Robert Moses.
      
      Log in to Reply
      1. LarrytheG
        
        March 5, 2020
        
        I was well aware of Moses LONG BEFORE your “advice”, guy.
        
        Moses was not a “small street” person. He advocated running superhighways right through the middle of town but his time was also prior to the beltway thing.
        
        I’m familiar with Jane Jacobs but I’m not sure she has had any real impact on this issue – the issue being what happens to urban areas when beltways are built.
        
        Beltways have dramatically changed the way that development occurs in urban areas – the most important is the land-development far outstrips the highway capacity and fixing it is an after-the-fact exercise.
      2. Reed Fawell 3rd
        
        March 5, 2020
        
        Larry says” I was well aware of Moses LONG BEFORE your “advice”, guy.”
        
        Larry go to 1013 post “Smart Growth for Everyone” and start reading.
        
        https://www.baconsrebellion.com/smart-growth-for-everyone/#comment-61605
LarrytheG

March 5, 2020

The city of Charlotte as well as Raleigh have awful traffic also and both now have toll roads… and yes.. people don’t like them down that way either.

There is a big difference between toll roads that have fixed tolls and toll roads that use dynamic tolling.

Fixed tolls basically are to pay for the road that is tolled. Dynamic tolling is not to pay just for the road – it’s meant to “shape” congestion levels by discouraging use of the road when it is maxed out and near gridlock.

Dynamic tolling causes people to change their behavior. To shift the time they use the road or being willing to pay a premium or carpool. It’s their choice. What they cannot do is use the road anytime they want regardless of congestion levels. It’s like looking for a cheap airline fare at the busiest time for flights or cheap seats at a playoff game.

WHAT IS CONGESTION PRICING?An image of an overhead sign across a road with overhead antennas. Transponders are read by overhead antennas, allowing tolls to be paid without stopping.
Transponders are read by overhead antennas, allowing
tolls to be paid without stopping

Congestion pricing – sometimes called value pricing – is a way of harnessing the power of the market to reduce the waste associated with traffic congestion. Congestion pricing works by shifting purely discretionary rush hour highway travel to other transportation modes or to off-peak periods, taking advantage of the fact that the majority of rush hour drivers on a typical urban highway are not commuters. By removing a fraction (even as small as 5%) of the vehicles from a congested roadway, pricing enables the system to flow much more efficiently, allowing more cars to move through the same physical space. Similar variable charges have been successfully utilized in other industries – for example, airline tickets, cell phone rates, and electricity rates. There is a consensus among economists that congestion pricing represents the single most viable and sustainable approach to reducing traffic congestion.

https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/congestionpricing/sec2.htm

Log in to Reply
LarrytheG

March 5, 2020

The city of Charlotte as well as Raleigh have awful traffic also and both now have toll roads… and yes.. people don’t like them down that way either.

There is a big difference between toll roads that have fixed tolls and toll roads that use dynamic tolling.

Fixed tolls basically are to pay for the road that is tolled. Dynamic tolling is not to pay just for the road – it’s meant to “shape” congestion levels by discouraging use of the road when it is maxed out and near gridlock.

Dynamic tolling causes people to change their behavior. To shift the time they use the road or being willing to pay a premium or carpool. It’s their choice. What they cannot do is use the road anytime they want regardless of congestion levels. It’s like looking for a cheap airline fare at the busiest time for flights or cheap seats at a playoff game.

WHAT IS CONGESTION PRICING?An image of an overhead sign across a road with overhead antennas. Transponders are read by overhead antennas, allowing tolls to be paid without stopping.
Transponders are read by overhead antennas, allowing
tolls to be paid without stopping

Congestion pricing – sometimes called value pricing – is a way of harnessing the power of the market to reduce the waste associated with traffic congestion. Congestion pricing works by shifting purely discretionary rush hour highway travel to other transportation modes or to off-peak periods, taking advantage of the fact that the majority of rush hour drivers on a typical urban highway are not commuters. By removing a fraction (even as small as 5%) of the vehicles from a congested roadway, pricing enables the system to flow much more efficiently, allowing more cars to move through the same physical space. Similar variable charges have been successfully utilized in other industries – for example, airline tickets, cell phone rates, and electricity rates. There is a consensus among economists that congestion pricing represents the single most viable and sustainable approach to reducing traffic congestion.

https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/congestionpricing/sec2.htm

Log in to Reply
LarrytheG

March 6, 2020

re: ” Larry go to 1013 post “Smart Growth for Everyone” and start reading.

https://www.baconsrebellion.com/smart-growth-for-everyone/#comment-61605”

but Reed, even back then I already knew about Moses – knew about him, decades before you “enlightened” me! 🙂

Moses was before beltways, especially interstate beltways – which changed development patterns for urban areas – way more than what Moses had advocated which basically advocated wiping out blighted areas with roads. Very little, if any, of his thinking has been retained in modern transportation planning.

In days prior to the Washington Beltway, we had US-signed roads like US Route 1, 50, 29, and some others. They basically were hub and spoke roads and people DID use the to commute to the “burbs” but the more congested those roads got, the longer it took to get to work from the fringes. It was self-limiting. People who lived in Fredericksburg, very few of them commuted to NoVa on Route 1. Quantico, yes, Pentegon, not much.

All of that changed when the interstate came through and connectecd to a beltway. Then people in Fredericksburg could not only commute to NoVa where the interstate touched it but to places like Tysons and Bethesda on the ring road/beltway.

Ditto with all other points on the beltway. Someone could live in Prince George and work at a place on the opposite side of the beltway – something that would have been nearly impossible on a spoke-hub transportation network.

I do not think Moses had anything to do with any of that. One of the major roads he DID work on – eventually became I-278 – not a beltway per se but it did go across spoke-hubs roads.

Log in to Reply
LarrytheG

March 6, 2020

re: ” Larry go to 1013 post “Smart Growth for Everyone” and start reading.

https://www.baconsrebellion.com/smart-growth-for-everyone/#comment-61605”

but Reed, even back then I already knew about Moses – knew about him, decades before you “enlightened” me! 🙂

Moses was before beltways, especially interstate beltways – which changed development patterns for urban areas – way more than what Moses had advocated which basically advocated wiping out blighted areas with roads. Very little, if any, of his thinking has been retained in modern transportation planning.

In days prior to the Washington Beltway, we had US-signed roads like US Route 1, 50, 29, and some others. They basically were hub and spoke roads and people DID use the to commute to the “burbs” but the more congested those roads got, the longer it took to get to work from the fringes. It was self-limiting. People who lived in Fredericksburg, very few of them commuted to NoVa on Route 1. Quantico, yes, Pentegon, not much.

All of that changed when the interstate came through and connectecd to a beltway. Then people in Fredericksburg could not only commute to NoVa where the interstate touched it but to places like Tysons and Bethesda on the ring road/beltway.

Ditto with all other points on the beltway. Someone could live in Prince George and work at a place on the opposite side of the beltway – something that would have been nearly impossible on a spoke-hub transportation network.

I do not think Moses had anything to do with any of that. One of the major roads he DID work on – eventually became I-278 – not a beltway per se but it did go across spoke-hubs roads.

Log in to Reply