WASHINGTON — New travel-time projections are expected to be released at public meetings next week on plans to add tolls to Interstate 66 inside the Capital Beltway.
“We’ve been running models to determine how people behave, as best as a model can tell you … through this corridor,” Virginia Department of Transportation’s Amanda Baxter said at a meeting last month of the Arlington Committee of 100.
There are concerns that drivers who want to avoid the tolls will just crowd on to parallel roads instead.
“We’re going to show people what that travel time difference will be, and the benefit of creating a reliable facility that operates at 45 miles an hour and you know you’re going to get on it and you know you’re going to get where you want to go,” Baxter said.
She says toll money can be used to make improvements to busy roads that run in the same direction as I-66.
“Part of the benefits of keeping the revenue in this corridor is that we can identify areas that are currently operating poorly today, and provide better signal timing,” she said. “But we also don’t want to make those roadways so attractive … that they would disincentivize how people are using our facility on I-66.”
Three public information meetings on the toll plan are scheduled for Oct. 5, 6 and 7.
Each one runs from 7-9 p.m. with a presentation that begins at 7:30 p.m.
Monday’s meeting is at VDOT’s Northern Virginia District Office in Fairfax, Tuesday’s takes place at Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School in Falls Church, and the Wednesday meeting is set for Washington-Lee High School in Arlington.
Monday’s meeting is set to be live streamed on Virginia.gov.
