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[Takumi]

Hmm. I may actually buy one if that happens.

[Beltway]

I can't understand why there is no federal funding for this project, especially considering the massive military presence in the region.

The facilities in  question are, of course, intrastate.  But I agree regarding the military bases in and near Hampton Roads.

In addition, Hampton Roads is also home to major seaports, or, in geek-speak, intermodal facilities.

Major non-Interstate highway projects often qualify for 70% or even 80% federal funding.  Even 50% for this project would provide major reduction in tolls.  Instead it is 0%...

[cpzilliacus]

D.C. Examiner: Name a Virginia road for $5,000 to $200,000

Cough up $200,000, promise not to use potty humor, and you could get to name your favorite stretch of interstate in Virginia.

Desperate for cash to build and fix roads, Virginia recently approved legislation that would allow corporations or individuals to pay to put their names on the state's roads and bridges. Following a successful program that allowed corporations to brand state highway rest stops, the naming-rights measure is expected to generate tens of millions of dollars for roads, according to transportation officials who are now identifying which pieces of the state's infrastructure are ripe for naming and what to charge.

[bsmart]

D.C. Examiner: Name a Virginia road for $5,000 to $200,000

Cough up $200,000, promise not to use potty humor, and you could get to name your favorite stretch of interstate in Virginia.

Desperate for cash to build and fix roads, Virginia recently approved legislation that would allow corporations or individuals to pay to put their names on the state's roads and bridges. Following a successful program that allowed corporations to brand state highway rest stops, the naming-rights measure is expected to generate tens of millions of dollars for roads, according to transportation officials who are now identifying which pieces of the state's infrastructure are ripe for naming and what to charge.

And I can remember when Virginia named highways (for Free) as an honor.  Mosby, Jackson, Lee immediately come to mind.  I think  US 29 is named after the 29th Infantry Division (The Blue and Gray Division, the MD & VA National Guard) 

How times have changed

[deathtopumpkins]

There's a difference between naming roads in someone's honor and because someone paid you money to though. Roads are still named in honor of politicians, but there are plenty of other stretches of road that are not.

As for the idea itself, I don't really care. No one is going to suddenly start calling a highway by a corporate-sponsored name no matter how much they pay.

[cpzilliacus]

WTOP Radio: Memo reveals Arlington ticket quota

A memo sent to Arlington County police officers earlier this month appears to outline a quota system for traffic tickets, arrests and parking citations, according to a report from television station WUSA 9.

Though the memo says “there is not, nor has there ever been a quota for traffic enforcement,” it goes on to list “monthly proactivity expectations,” complete with a set number of traffic summons and a maximum percentage of warnings.

[1995hoo]

....

I noticed the new BGSs for the HOV ramps have been put into place for traffic heading from the Inner Loop to Shirley Highway (i.e., going west into Springfield and exiting to the left of the I-95 flyover). Can't seem to get a good picture due to their location behind the flyover unless I were to hold the camera in my hand, which I don't like to do. They have the white "Restricted Lanes" banner at the top, then the shield and destination, then an empty opening where it looks like a VMS will be inserted. Whether that's going to contain toll rate info or instead HOV info, who knows. They haven't hoisted any toll gantries on that end of the project—the first one you see on the Inner Loop is just west of the main part of the Springfield Interchange going up the hill towards the overpass above Backlick Road.

I posted the above this past October 18. froggie replied as follows:

The open space is where a small VMS will go showing the toll rate.

A few weeks later I posted this photo of one of the then-new signs with the open space, along with the speculation quoted below:

....

You know, the other possibility that occurs to me about the small VMS units that will go on these signs is that they may very well not include toll rates at all (there are still no signs of toll gantries anywhere on that side of the Springfield Interchange) and that instead they may well say "OPEN" or "CLOSED." Obviously, if the ramp from the Beltway to the inbound express lanes on I-395 is open, the ramp to the outbound express lanes on I-95 will be closed—both ramps will never be open at the same time. (My interest in the setup stems from the fact that I can see myself using those ramps very frequently, especially coming home from Caps games.)

....

A few minutes ago I received an e-mail from the 495 Express Lanes project in response to my query about whether the ramps will be tolled and it said as follows:

[My real name],

Thank you for your interest in the 495 Express Lanes.

All of the HOV ramps  will follow the existing HOV rules in effect today when the 495 Express Lanes open later this year. They are not a part of the tolled system. Hopefully this answers your question.

Please let us know if we can help you with anything else.

Safe travels.
495 Express Lanes Team

www.495ExpressLanes.com

Of course it bears remembering that if/when the Shirley Highway HO/T proposal is implemented, these ramps would then require payment of a toll by non-HOV drivers because, even if the ramps themselves are not tolled, the reversible center carriageway on Shirley Highway would be.

[1995hoo]

WTOP: Express Lanes signs about to debut on Beltway

Adam Tuss reports that in the next few weeks we'll start seeing the "495 Express Lanes" signage. I can report, based on a trip to Falls Church today, that at least one is already up and is not covered with plastic—on the Inner Loop stretch between US-50 and I-66 there's a new sign with the white "E-ZPass Express" banner. It looks like it's got a VMS section underneath it, though I didn't get a great look because I was in slow traffic surrounded by trucks (including tractor-trailers driving on the shoulder). I also noted that they've started a bit of lane-striping near Braddock on the Inner Loop (very minimal, to be sure). The pace of construction has really accelerated big-time in the past couple of months, no doubt helped by the great weather recently. It looks like they definitely ought to have it all finished this year—though I hope for all of our sakes one of the final steps in the project would be a full re-pave of most of the existing road surface to get rid of all the annoying ruts and seams left over from the years of construction.

(Incidentally, I noted that the first advance overhead for I-66, which is located just before the Gallows Road overpass, has the exit tab on the LEFT for a right-side exit. I sent an e-mail to Steve Titunik of VDOT, but I rather doubt the sign will be replaced or altered because the exit "tab" appears to be part of the same large piece of metal, making a change uneconomical and impractical. I suppose, given the new standard that exit tabs for left exits include the "LEFT" banner, and given that the new signs on the Beltway follow that standard, the misplacement of this exit tab maybe isn't such a big deal—since it doesn't say "LEFT EXIT 49 B–A," it necessarily means it's a right-side exit.)

The part of Adam Tuss's article that I find most interesting, following a re-read, is his comment that they're going to start testing the tolling equipment in the next few weeks. I have to assume this is going to be on the portion between I-66 and US-29. That section is already paved within the last few weeks.

[cpzilliacus]

WAVY Channel 10: Businesses react to possible toll delay

A budget amendment to delay tolls until January 2014 has left some Portsmouth business owners with mixed reactions.

Crockin told WAVY.com he's been keeping a close eye on Louise Lucas' bill and doesn't think a two year delay will help.

"What I want to see, and what other people in Portsmouth want to see, is no tolls," Crockin added. "Find another way to pay for the tunnels."

[1995hoo]

Following on my other comment from yesterday about the new signs on the Beltway, the 495 Express Lanes project put this picture on their Twitter feed. The overpass in the background is US-29 (Lee Highway) and the ramp under construction to the left is the new northbound exit/southbound entrance from/to the Express Lanes. This is the same sign I mentioned in my previous comment, but when I went through there I was in the right lane because I wanted to exit onto I-66.

The white banner shown here is to be the standard at the top of all signs for the new lanes (width will vary, of course).

[1995hoo]

Drove to Falls Church on the Beltway today and was glad to see some serious progress. The warm winter and spring have surely helped with that.

Substitute pylons for the orange barrels and the picture below (Inner Loop) gives a pretty good sense for how the Express Lanes separation will look. The gantries just north of the US-29 overpass have the tolling equipment in place, but I didn't get a good picture there since I was in the far right lane trying to exit to I-66 in some heavy traffic and the camera was clipped to the passenger-side sun visor (I don't like using a handheld device when I'm in traffic since our cars are all manual-shift). Also noted a lot of the lane striping leading to the new ramps in Springfield is complete or nearly complete and a crew were out installing the VMS units on the BGSs for the Inner Loop exit to the new ramps.




In a prior post I mentioned the advance sign for I-66 with the exit tab on the wrong side. It's been fixed. Steve Titunik had someone send me an e-mail saying they would go have a look at it, but I didn't expect it to be fixed so soon.

[OracleUsr]

I was in DC Saturday after a drive on Skyline Drive.  Is the "LEFT" banner on the Dulles Toll Road exit sign a first for VA?

[froggie]

No, but close.  We've had one on southbound I-95 at US 1 just north of Woodbridge (Exit 161) for about a year now.

[1995hoo]

There have also been a couple at the Pentagon Mixing Bowl interchange since at least sometime last year. I'm not precisely sure when they went up, but they're on southbound VA-27 next to I-395 and they're part of those sign assemblies that use the very ugly large initial caps.

The still-covered signs for the new HOV ramps in Springfield bear "Left Exit" tabs without exit numbers. The tabs on the Inner Loop are visible; they have all-yellow backgrounds instead of using yellow just for the word "Left" like the other signs we've described.


Edited to add: Here's a photo of the ones near the Pentagon. Took this picture last June, but the signs had been there for awhile before then. As I look at this now I'm noticing for the first time the conflict between the "Left Exit" and "Exit Only" designations on this sign (denoting that I-395 and Ridge Road represent "exiting" from VA-27, Washington Boulevard) and the smaller exit sign at the gore that shows the VA-27 thru lanes as the "exit" (look between the white bus and the SUV).

[NE2]

the very ugly large initial caps.

Whatever. You'll get used to them.

[1995hoo]

the very ugly large initial caps.

Whatever. You'll get used to them.

So? Does that mean that it's not valid to say they're ugly? I mean, by the end of the Springsteen concert Sunday night I was "used to" the fact that the guy to my right had really bad BO, but it didn't mean I thought it was a good thing.

[NE2]

Oh, never mind. I thought you were talking about the initial caps on the directions, not the other text.

[1995hoo]

Oh, never mind. I thought you were talking about the initial caps on the directions, not the other text.

No, the ones on the directions don't bug me at all, and indeed that style has always made sense to me because people often abbreviate directions as "N," "S," etc. VDOT used the large initial caps for the directions prior to using any Clearview and I was used to that (although it lends itself to some odd results when they have a full line of text in all-caps and then suddenly that one letter is larger). My objection to the signs in the photo above relates primarily to the initial caps on the street names and destinations. I don't think the sign on the right is all that well laid-out either, but it's the initial caps that I find jarring (and there's a series of other signs along VA-27 there that use a similar design). It places undue emphasis on the first letter of each word—for example, on that I-395 sign my eyes note the "S A R R" part more than anything else.

[OracleUsr]

No, but close.  We've had one on southbound I-95 at US 1 just north of Woodbridge (Exit 161) for about a year now.

I didn't remember seeing that when I drove south on I-95 Sat. night...I figured I would see a "LEFT EXIT 161" there.

[cpzilliacus]

GreaterGreater Washington: "My way or the highway" bill awaits VA governor's decision

[Mapmikey]

In a prior post I mentioned the advance sign for I-66 with the exit tab on the wrong side. It's been fixed. Steve Titunik had someone send me an e-mail saying they would go have a look at it, but I didn't expect it to be fixed so soon.

There is still one on the outer loop just before I-66 that has the exit tab incorrect for the US 50 exit

Mapmikey

[1995hoo]

In a prior post I mentioned the advance sign for I-66 with the exit tab on the wrong side. It's been fixed. Steve Titunik had someone send me an e-mail saying they would go have a look at it, but I didn't expect it to be fixed so soon.

There is still one on the outer loop just before I-66 that has the exit tab incorrect for the US 50 exit

Mapmikey

Haven't seen that one because I haven't been through there in several months. Sounds like someone at VDOT or Fluor–Transurban made up his own idea of how to use exit tabs.

[1995hoo]

WTOP: Plans moving ahead for I-95 tolls

[cpzilliacus]

Also from WTOP Radio: Dulles Toll Road fee increase on the horizon

[froggie]

Last month, VDOT wanted to make it easier and cheaper to get an EZpass.

And now, they want to charge a monthly fee for it. (H/T Allen Seth Dunn for the link)