Dulles Gway Widening

The Dulles Greenway will widen 8km (5mi) of its eastbound roadway with a third lane at a cost of $8.5m. Toll Road Investors Partnership II, the owners, announced the plans Dec 6, saying they hope to begin construction late spring 2000. The third lane will extend from Exit 6 (VA-77) at Ashburn, past the new interchange at Old Ox Rd to the mainline plaza located on the northern edge of Dulles airport.

The Greenway has had a remarkable turnaround in the past two years. In its first years 1995 through 1997 it defaulted on debt service completely, and was in severe financial trouble. But since then it has managed to aggressively market its value to motorists and to turn itself around. It has been lucky also in that it has become Internet Alley with vast complexes of offices for MCI/Worldcom UUNet, AOL and many smaller dot-coms being developed in the immediate vicinity together with upscale housing for the employees among others. The Gway is now refinanced and profitable and has gone from suffering an embarrassing lack of traffic 40 months ago to needing to enhance capacity.

Congestion at the mainline toll plaza in the AM peak has been tackled by pushing usage of the SmarTag toll transponders. Sept 15 the toll for cash payments went from $1.15 to $1.40 while the SmartTag toll remained the same. E-tags now make up 70% of Gway transactions in the rush hours, 65% overall, according to Mark Manlove, marketing manager.

Reason for the widening is the large number of eastbound commuters joining the road from the Ashburn residential neighborhood in the mornings. Having solved the problem at the toll plaza they now find the existing 2-lanes will not deliver traffic fast enough and the most easterly 8km eastbound are a chokepoint.

The Gway plans to expand the whole 23km (14mi) roadway to 2x3-lanes eventually by widening inwards, taking up a part of the wide central grassed median. Traffic is presently running 43k veh/day weekdays.