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Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) announced a deal Wednesday that will add 10 more miles of express lanes to the Interstate 95 corridor, expanding the system of high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes to Fredericksburg by 2022. As part of the agreement, the private company building the lanes will give the state $277 million upfront to cover costs of a bridge over the Rappahannock River and other improvements along the corridor, Virginia transportation officials said. The deal essentially moves forward a 10-mile extension from Garrisonville Road (Route 610) in Stafford County to Route 17 in the Fredericksburg area. It also builds on...

WASHINGTON — About two years ago, during the last big debate over Interstate 66 rush-hour tolls for solo drivers, there was a lot of talk about $17 round-trip tolls. Virginia’s transportation secretary said this week that the tolls drivers have seen inside the Beltway so far remain in line with those projections. New data the Virginia Department of Transportation provided Thursday from the first day of tolls on Monday morning show the average morning toll for drivers who paid with an E-ZPass, or who will get automated violation notices in the mail, was $10.70, while the average afternoon toll paid...

Texas lawmakers have gone from championing to criticizing toll roads, a shift that some Houston-area leaders worry has gone too far and could limit coming projects. "Without toll roads and that funding, I don't know what we are going to do," said Montgomery County Judge Craig Doyal, citing the need for new roadways in rapidly growing parts of the Houston area. The concern, voiced at a Dec. 15 meeting of the Houston-Galveston Area Council's Transportation Policy Council - the region's transportation planning group - was shared in response to decisions by the Texas Transportation Commission. A day earlier, the commission...

T he expansion of Virginia’s extensive system of high­-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes is shifting to Interstate 395. Construction is set to take off before the end of the year along an eight-mile stretch of Interstate 395, where today’s high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes are being converted into toll lanes. The $480 million project will deliver the next major milestone in the state’s vision to create a network of more than 90 miles of HOT lanes in Northern Virginia by 2022. About 45 miles of express lanes have opened on Interstates 495 and 95 within the past five years, and the state...

WASHINGTON — The Virginia Department of Transportation has announced that an extension of the express lanes on Interstate 95 in Stafford County will open ahead of schedule later this month. On the afternoon of Oct. 31, southbound commuters on the I-95 Express Lanes will be able to drive two miles deeper in Stafford County when a new section of the reversible road is scheduled to open, VDOT says. Southbound afternoon drivers will be able to drive past Route 610 in the Express Lanes and merge onto the left side of the mainline about a mile south of Route 610. Drivers...

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Thursday proposed a $9 billion plan to widen three of the state’s most congested highways — the Capital Beltway, Interstate 270 and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway — in what he said would include the largest public-private partnership for highways in North America. The projects would add four toll lanes each to Maryland’s portion of the Capital Beltway (I-495) and to I-270 from the Beltway to Frederick. It would also widen the Baltimore-Washington Parkway (MD 295) by four toll lanes after taking over ownership from the federal government. Because of private-sector involvement, Hogan said, the plan would...

Thanks to Del. Kaye Kory for sending me this; I strongly agree! I’d add that anyone who thought it was a good idea to jam a bike/pedestrian right next to car and trucks on I-66 seriously needs to have their heads examined. WTF???COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF VIRGINIA RICHMONDAugust 11, 2017The Honorable Aubrey Layne Virginia Department of Transportation Patrick Henry Building, 3rd Floor 1111 East Broad Street Richmond, VA 23219Re: I-66 HOT Lanes Shared Use Trail ObjectionsSecretary Layne:We are writing to express our opposition to the current design of the shared use path on Interstate 66 (I-66 Trail) proposed...

The widening of Interstate 66 outside the Capital Beltway is bringing HOT lanes to one of the region’s most congested corridors. It also will make room for bicyclists and pedestrians — putting them on a trail next to one of the region’s busiest and most congested highways. The bike path, part of the $2.3 billion interstate expansion project, has drawn cheers and criticism from biking aficionados who welcome the addition of the trail but say, if built as proposed, users will be too close to cars whizzing by on the interstate and exposed to toxic exhaust fumes. For about five...

Investors are hoping to seize upon the $1 trillion infrastructure plan proposed by President Donald Trump to transform the nation’s highways, bridges, and tunnels into assets they can monetize by adding tolls and other user fees.The Trump infrastructure plan, which the administration plans to roll out this week, is centered on the idea of “asset recycling,” which refers to the process of securing new infrastructure spending by leasing the operations of existing public property to private operators.The privatization-centered scheme has the nation’s largest toll operators salivating. Transurban, Cintra, and TransCore, three major toll operators, have retained federal lobbyists to influence...

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) — Virginia Secretary of Transportation Aubrey Layne on Wednesday discussed a plan to ease congestion in Hampton Roads — but it comes with a cost to some. In October, the Commonwealth Transportation Board voted to allow VDOT to convert eight miles of HOV lanes on I-64 into toll lanes. The conversion to high occupancy toll (HOT) lanes or express lanes will impact the stretch of I-64 from the I-264 interchange up to Interstate 564. Solo drivers will be able to use the lanes for the first time during peak hours, but they will have to pay a...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - A proposed bill to ban express lanes in Florida died Thursday in the House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee. Despite causing an increase in crashes and confusion, express lanes, according to the Florida Department of Transportation, help move people faster, and that if they were eliminated the state would lose $1.5 billion over 10 years. All of that money is used to improve and fix roads. Sen. Frank Artiles, R-Miami, filed SB 250 in January. It that would have allowed the express lanes to remain in operation only until tolls are collected to pay off the bonds that...

In July Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe stood on the platform of a train station in Alexandria to announce that the U.S. Department of Transportation had granted $165 million for the Atlantic Gateway project.While this is a multimodal project featuring rail, bus, and highway improvements, it was clearly the latter that most enthused the governor. At one point during his remarks, he declared that because of the road projects, “Today, the congestion is going to end!”The primary focus of the highway improvements will be an extension of the HOT (high occupancy toll) lanes on I-95 and I-395. The only other speaker...

The Commonwealth of Virginia awarded procurement of its Transform66 Outside the Beltway project to I-66 Express Mobility Partners, a consortium of private companies, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced on Nov. 3. I-66 Express Mobility Partners, which consists of transportation infrastructure company Cintra, public infrastructure investment firm Meridiam, and the contractors Ferrovial Agroman US and Allan Myers VA, Inc., will be responsible for financing, designing, building, maintaining and operating the interstate expansion. The Virginia Department of Transportation’s (VDOT) Transform66 Outside the Beltway project will add two express lanes in each direction between I-495 and Gainesville along with three general purpose lanes...

Highway express lanes provide a faster trip for carpoolers, people who drive low-emission cars, and solo travelers who are willing to pay more.ThatÂ’s the idea, anyway.But as Americans drive more miles than ever before, express lanes are facing a challenge: they are too popular. So many drivers of all kinds are using the lanes that it is increasingly difficult for transportation officials to keep them speedy.For solo drivers, the tolls in express lanes typically vary based on demand. In some places, drivers pay more during peak travel times, and in others prices go up as more cars enter the lane....

The Ontario lottery corporation recently started advertising its newest scratch-and-win lottery: tickets cost $30 (the highest price among its lotteries), and the top prize is a cool $2.5 million. Now, if you want an indication of how bad traffic is in the GTA, consider that Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca announced a lottery of his own on Thursday: tickets cost $180 each, though you only pay if you win. The prize? One of 1,000 permits to drive in an uncongested highway lane for 16 kilometres between Burlington and Oakville. The ad copy writes itself: Imagine the freedom of cruising at...

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- METRO is getting pressure from veterans and a Houston congresswoman to act quickly on allowing disabled vets to drive the transit agency's high occupancy transit lanes for free, which most other Texas toll authorities offer. Surrounded by veterans Tuesday, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, said she was baffled why the transit agency could not implement what she described as a "simple request." "A constituent called and said they wanted to be able to access the HOT lanes for free, without cost during off-peak hours," Jackson Lee said. "I really thought it was a simple request. I did...

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner has announced with members of the state general assembly a plan allowing the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) to add at least one additional lane in each direction to a 25-mile stretch of Interstate 55 near Chicago using a public-private partnership (P3) agreement. IDOT is allowed to use P3 agreements only if the general assembly adopts a resolution supporting a proposed project, a state law in place since 2011. This would be the first P3 managed lane project in the state. “By using existing resources to leverage private investment, we can build the type of infrastructure...

The National Park Service and the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) have announced a new partnership to construct the nation's first bicycle High Occupancy/Toll Express Lanes on the Mount Vernon Trail between Rosslyn and Mount Vernon.

More tolls are coming to Ontario roads, Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca said Monday, with details on the province’s plans due in the next couple of months.Del Duca was talking about a report by a group of environmentally minded policy types calling themselves “the Ecofiscal Commission” that says road tolls are the only way to handle worsening congestion. Particularly, the report calls for adding tolls that would allow vehicles that would not otherwise qualify to use existing high-occupancy vehicle lanes.“Road use has traditionally been freely available to anyone with a driver’s licence, and the open-access nature of roads makes them...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 02, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hausfeld, a global plaintiffs’ law firm, announced today that the judge overseeing Brown, et al. v. Transurban USA, Inc., et al., No. 15-cv-494 (E.D. Va.), the Honorable James C. Cacheris, has largely denied the Defendants’ motions to dismiss the pending class action case. The plaintiffs in the case alleges that the I-495 and I-95/I-395 HOT Lanes operator (Transurban) and its debt-collection agents (Faneuil, Inc. and Law Enforcement Systems, LLC (“LES”)) violated state and federal law by assessing and seeking to collect crippling administrative fees and penalties for allegedly missed tolls. Drivers who use...