Posts about I-66

The main complicating issue is that highway shoulders are usually too narrow and not free enough from obstructions to immediately open them up to buses. Interstate highway standards call for 9-foot shoulders, but you need at least 10 feet for a bus, and really 11 feet is preferable. So a typical highway shoulder will have to be beefed up in order to be used as a bus lane.

That's a lot easier, and cheaper, than just about anything else you could do. But it's still a construction project that needs to be planned and funded.

Minneapolis has an extensive network of over 300 miles of shoulder bus lanes on highways. But it's taken them over 20 years to get there. They have a continuous program that adds a few miles each year. They started with the low-hanging fruit, and have worked up to more complicated stretches.

That's the idea behind Virginia's pilot project on I-66. At first, the section allowing buses will be short. It won't be a busway so much as a spot where buses can jump ahead of a queue of cars. But over time VDOT could lengthen the segment and provide a larger benefit.

For safety reasons, buses are usually only permitted to go 35 miles per hour when using shoulders. Still, that's enough to get by the worst congestion. If traffic is moving faster than that, buses just stay in the regular lanes.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

VDOT showed 4 "packages" of changes at 2 public meetings, along with stats for how each would likely affect travel times, traffic volumes, and more.

Package 1, which would make the existing lanes of I-66 into HOT lanes, free for vehicles with 3 or more people and tolled for 1 and 2, brings almost as much benefit as Package 2, which would add a 3rd lane on top of that. But package 1 costs about $350-650 million less.

Package 1 (convert existing lanes to HOT lanes):

Package 2 (add 3rd lane, convert all to HOT lanes):

Allen Muchnick of the Arlington Coalition for Sensible Transportation was one of the stakeholders in Tuesday's meeting, and got to see the draft final report. It lists the following metrics for packages 1 and 2, plus another option called a "sensitivity test," which tried only applying tolls during the peak period where I-66 is HOV-only today.

Here are the key metrics. The "Pkg 1 + ST" column reflects this new option from the sensitivity test.

This new option, tolling at peak times, appears to move more people by both car and transit than the widening, yet saves hundreds of millions of dollars. Even without this option, it's likely that widening the road at such cost, and with all the disruption it will cause, is not worth gaining only a few percentage points of extra movement.

The metric of "peak period congested VMT" measures the wrong thing. This is the amount of vehicle miles traveled that happen in an uncongested road. But congetion, per se, is not the problem; a short drive in traffic is better than a long drive without it. The goal is to move people, or more accurately, get people where they need to be.

There were plenty of flaws with this study from the start. This assumes, as the "baseline," that Virginia has implemented every change in the regional Constrained Long-Range Plan (CLRP). That includes adding the 3 "spot improvements," which would already widen I-66 in several places; and changing I-66 to HOV-3 and assuming that nobody cheats the HOV restrictions.

The CLRP also includes some projects which will help in the I-66 corridor but have no funding today, like lengthening all Metro trains to 8 cars and adding new bus service in the area. Hopefully these will happen, but there's no guarantee.

A better study would have used today as the baseline, and looked at the CLRP changes like the "spot improvements" as some of the options. After all, if another change helps more, it's far from too late to build that instead. We would also then be able to better see the effects of this phantom bus service, though I'm told the full report does provide more detail on the effects of these proposals.

BeyondDC reminded me yesterday about a flowchart I made back in 2009. I've updated it slightly:

Is the urge to widen I-66 coming from engineers who can't shake the paving habit, or political pressure from above? If a transportation agency is unwilling to actually recommend anything other than widening, regardless of what a study shows, then that study really is the sham as people accused, and I feared, at the time, and VDOT might as well change its name to Virginia Department Of Paving Your Community.

1. Make both lanes of I-66 free for buses and HOV-3 at all times, and toll single-passenger vehicles (SOV) and HOV-2 at all times.
   
2. Add a 3rd lane to I-66. Make all 3 free for buses and HOV-3, tolled for SOV and HOV-2 at all times.
   
3. Add a 3rd lane to I-66 to be HOV-2 in the reverse peak. In the peak direction (eastbound mornings, westbound evenings), keep all lanes HOV-3. Off-peak, leave all lanes open to anyone (as they are today).
   
4. Make the shoulder of US-50 into a bus lane. Add express bus service to downtown DC from places along the I-66 and Dulles corridors.

All of these assume that Virginia has finished all of the projects in the existing Constrained Long-Range Plan (CLRP). That includes the so-called "spot improvements" that widen I-66 in select places, and also converting I-66 to HOV-3.

Packages 1 and 2, the HOT lane options, both would help SOV and HOV-2 drivers and hurt HOV-3 drivers, compared to the default of having I-66 be HOV-3 only. But there's not a whole lot of difference between the two. According to the model, having the extra lane would slightly harm transit and speed drivers by about 2%, at a cost of $310-685 million.

Package 1 (convert existing lanes to HOT lanes):

Package 2 (add 3rd lane, convert all to HOT lanes):

Package 3 induces more driving but doesn't do much to change travel times for anyone. Package 4, the US-50 bus lanes, would improve travel times on transit by 7%, and drivers benefit by a very small amount. The presentation says that a number of people switch from rail to bus because the buses improve, which should also help with crowding on Metro.

Package 3 (add HOV lane):

Package 4 (bus lane on US-50):

The packages also factor in projects like better bicycle and pedestrian facilities, TDM programs, Integrated Corridor Management (ICM) like digital signs and ramp meters, added bus service and more.

These graphs are all a tiny bit confusing because VDOT assumed as the "baseline" that I-66 has changed from the current HOV-2 to HOV-3, and that they've already widened in some places with "spot improvements."

It would have been more helpful for laypeople if we could also compare each alternative to what would happen if VDOT didn't build the "spot improvements" and didn't change to HOV-3. In fact, an initial impetus for this study was to find out whether the spot improvements are a good idea in the first place, or whether other options would work better.

VDOT will release the study, including more details and its recommendations, in June. It seems unlikely that they would recommend widening I-66 given these results. A combination of options 1 and 4 seems like it could deliver real improvements to both drivers and transit riders without spending a lot of money on complex, unpopular, and minimally helpful highway widening projects.

Residents can provide comments to VDOT by emailing info@i66multimodalstudy.com.

Update: The original version of this post showed incorrect graphs for packages 2 and 3. The graphs have been corrected to match those from the VDOT presentation.

The whole reason VDOT is doing this study comes from a battle in early 2009. VDOT wanted to widen I-66 in some places, but advocates argued they needed to analyze other options instead of just assuming widening was the answer. Arlington and Fairfax members of the TPB briefly blocked the project, and agreed to let it proceed on the condition VDOT do this study.

Will they truly be open to more creative multimodal options, or simply got through the motions only to reach a predetermined conclusion that more road capacity is the only answer?

Map from VDOT defining the I-66 corridor inside the Beltway.

The study's mission is to "identify a range of multimodal and corridor management solutions (operational, transit, bike, pedestrian, and highway) that can be implemented to reduce highway and transit congestion and improve overall mobility within the I-66 corridor, between I-495 and the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge."

One thing that jumps out on the map is that while the corridor has three major east-west roadways, it has just one dedicated bike trail. VDOT doesn't step outside its of its roads-first mentality too often, so Wednesday's meeting will be a good opportunity to send them a message.

I-66 Multimodal Study Open House & Presentation
Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011
6-8 pm (presentation begins at 6:30 pm)
Arlington County Board Room
2100 Clarendon Blvd, Arlington

Recently I had a chance to test this presumption. I was crossing over I-66 on the pedestrian overpass near Madison Manor Park (map).

I tried to count how many cars were scofflaws but soon realized that it was difficult to tell if there was a child in the back seat or not. Also, many of the cars had the clean-fuel license plates

From this vantage point, the license plates could be read fairly easily, so I chose to count the plates instead. Traffic seemed to be traveling about 30-40 miles per hour, slower than free-flowing.

• 333 cars: 67 with clean-car license plates; 266 without.
  
• 1 motorcycle
  
• 2 buses
  
• 1 18-wheeler! (which are illegal on this highway)
  
• 1 eastbound 6-car Metro train

Of the cars, 67 had clean-fuel license plates, approximately 20%.

Here's some quick math extrapolating to an hour and making some assumptions:

• 2700 HOV cars with 2.2 riders = 6,000 people
  
• 670 clean-fuel cars with 1.1 riders = 750 people
  
• 20 buses with 40 people = 2,000 people
  
• 10 Metro trains with 800 riders = 8,000 people

The clean-fuel cars represent less than 5% of the people being transported along this corridor but represent 20% of the cars. Would removing that 20% increase flow enough or more than enough to make up the difference? Would increased flow entice more HOV cars onto I-66?

I-66 looking westbound from Ohio St.

In the photo at right, you can see the (semi) vegetated median between the left shoulder and the Metrorail tracks. It is being partially removed to make room for the additional roadway width.

You can see the demolition of the median in the top image.

The Custis Trail passes under I-66 along this stretch of highway.  At the point were it crosses underneath there are three bridges: one for each direction of traffic and one for the Metrorail tracks. The westbound bridge is being widened.

To accommodate pedestrian and bicycle traffic during construction, VDOT has constructed a structure for protection (below). There have been occasional detours while work is being done here. The detour is well marked and only slightly longer.

Once the bridge is widened, there will be less daylight at this point. Although there is some relatively inadequate lighting now, it may need to be upgraded as part of the projects.

According to the project's entry in the 2030 Constrained Long-Range Transportation Plan, the main motives for the project are to reduce "recurring congestion, support the economic vitality of the metropolitan area, increase the safety of all users, increase the accessibility of people and freight, and to promote efficient system management and operation."

Furthermore, the project will ostensibly enable the corridor to serve as an efficient emergency evacuation route. But the suggestion that this will improve the road as an emergency evacuation route is just silly. The capacity of I-66 for evacuation will not be increased by adding a lane for a mile and a half. This language is likely a holdover from the arguments used for widening the entire length of I-66 inside the Beltway.

Once the "spot improvements" are all in place, there's a good chance political pressure to widen the relatively short remaining sections will grow very strong, and VDOT will eventually prevail. It will be interesting to see how long that takes.

4. Free parking spots could sprout meters by Lisa Rein and Yamiche Alcindor, The Washington Post, October 20 (article, GGW commentary). Rein calls a remote apartment tower with lots of free parking "every renter's dream," exposing bias right off the bat. Then she says how Arlington's proposed parking rule changes would force all that parking to stop being free. But that's totally false, and the Post had to print a correction to the fundamental premise of the article.

5. Tysons will need $15 billion -- 'with a B' by Lisa Rein, The Washington Post, October 30 (article, GGW commentary). Rein sees a PowerPoint with $15 billion worth of projects over 40 years and writes about how unbelievably expensive Tysons will be. Too bad that list includes projects that will happen regardless, projects developers would pay for, and even projects not really related to Tysons. The headline writer makes it even worse with a really stupid headline. The article prompts a very long rebuttal from Fairfax Chairman Sharon Bulova.

6. The media frenzy over the Fenty bicycle rides, by various reporters, November 9-10. WTOP's Mark Segraves kicks it off by following Fenty's bicycle ride in a van, noticing some possible misuse of police resources. That's a reasonable story, but WTOP's headline focuses on the ride "clog[ging] traffic" which doesn't appear to be true, and subsequent press stories pile on with an anti-bike slant that misses the real story. Mike DeBonis notes that Bill Myers had the same story in the Examiner the year before; potentially inappropriate police utilization just wasn't sensational enough, but bicyclists forcing cars to change lanes was.

7. That Street Sweeper May Soon Give You a Ticket by Tom Tim Craig, The Washington Post, May 22 (article, GGW commentary). A Bethesda resident is annoyed that she gets tickets when she parks illegally. AAA's John Townsend says DC is "trying to make the District a car-free zone." Craig doesn't bother to find anyone who appreciates getting illegally parked cars out of rush hour travel lanes.

8. Picking Your Pocket series by Adam Tuss, WTOP, April 20-23 (articles 1, 2, 3, 4, GGW commentary). Every enforcement of a law is "picking your pocket," public safety benefits be damned, from speed cameras to street sweeping.

9. Vote to Forgo I-66 Expansion Imperils Federal Funds, Increases Ire by Eric Weiss, The Washington Post, February 20 (article, GGW commentary). Continuing his gift for using war metaphors in transportation debates, Weiss says that a COG vote to delay I-66 widening "inflamed tensions" between inner and outer jurisdictions, but Weiss seems to be the one most irate overall.

10. New transportation fines, fees leave many feeling pinched by Alan Suderman, Washington Examiner, November 29 (article). Yet another one-sided piece about a few residents annoyed when caught breaking the law, with quotes from AAA about how unfair it is. At least it's a tiny bit less one-sided than some of the others.

Why so much picking on the Post? It's simple: They reach a lot of people, and a bad article in the Post can do a lot more damage than a bad article elsewhere. Being the big kid on the block means you get the cheers and the jeers; the Post had three of the top four slots in yesterday's top ten as well. The Post does a great job of watchdogging Metro, but doesn't apply a similar level of scrutiny or investigative resources to MDOT and VDOT.

You'll notice that yesterday I praised reporters as individuals, but highlighted articles rather than people today. That's because excepting major investigative reports, most of the important news is not really big news, but everyday comprehension of small developments. But the really bad articles stand out like giant sore thumbs.

Also, just because a reporter writes something really bad doesn't make them a terrible reporter or a bad person. Maybe their editor assigned it that way, and the headline writer oversensationalized it. Even if not, anyone can have an off day. While writing a piece on this list disqualified a reporter from making our list of the best, these folks could well make that list for 2010.