Thursday night at our HOA meeting, someone asked Jeff McKay (Lee District's member of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors) about "the plans to toll the Fairfax County Parkway," so there's clearly misinformation out there–she thought it was to become a toll road. McKay correctly pointed out the current VDOT survey that's online is to gauge public opinion about options. He said one major thing the county would like VDOT to do is to figure out a way to allow for express bus lanes, whether as part of HOV or HO/T lanes or via some other design, so as to allow for bus routes to tie into Phase II of the Silver Line as well as improved transit access from our part of the county to places like Reston Town Center (recognizing no rational people who have any choice would ride the Blue Line down to Rosslyn and then the Silver Line all the way back out to Reston).
McKay was very much against HO/T lanes on the Parkway. He opposed the I-95/I-395 HO/T lanes and he feels they don't work; he was less negative about the Beltway (no doubt in part because they didn't take existing lanes to create the HO/T facility). I do think he made a valid point that HO/T lanes would probably be more difficult to implement on a largely arterial-type road like the Parkway than on an Interstate,
especially a road with traffic lights and at-grade turns. He didn't really discuss that further, but it's a major consideration–if you add HO/T lanes within the current footprint, the traffic light cycles could potentially become a lot more complicated (and delay traffic a lot more) unless you use creative intersection designs (jughandles, anyone?); in addition, it might cause problems for the neighborhoods that access the Parkway at intersections that don't have traffic lights. I'm not sure how you'd work it for traffic wanting to leave the HO/T lanes.
I responded to the survey. One of the things I'd like them to do is to get rid of the traffic light at Popes Head Road, either via a SPUI (traffic light on Popes Head) or perhaps a diamond with roundabouts on Popes Head. That's currently the only traffic light between Burke and Route 50 and it seems to back up traffic more than it really should (I don't know why).
BTW, the GGW writer is confused about HOV versus HO/T lanes:
HOV lanes are available to carpoolers, buses, and other exempt vehicles without charge, while other vehicles are required to pay a fee that is adjusted in response to demand. Similarly, HOT lanes restrict traffic in designated lanes for vehicles with at least two or three people. The difference is a driver of a car with only one person can also use it if they pay a toll. This can help a municipality further reduce traffic in the regular lanes while monetizing the unused capacity in the express lanes.
The "fee" imposed on SOVs in an HOV lane is called a "fine" and it varies based not on demand but on how many HOV tickets you've gotten.