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1998 SESSION


HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 134
Requesting the Department of Transportation to provide a report updating previous Department of Transportation studies on the benefits of constructing one or more limited access parkways and bridges connecting Virginia and Maryland between the American Legion Bridge and the north-south powerline alignment in Loudoun County.

Agreed to by the House of Delegates, March 12, 1998
Agreed to by the Senate, March 10, 1998

WHEREAS, the highways in Northern Virginia and the metropolitan Washington area are among the most congested in the United States; and

WHEREAS, more than half of all trips in the greater Washington area both originate and end in the suburbs, with the fastest-growing travel direction being circumferential, from suburb to suburb; and

WHEREAS, several hundred thousand commuters travel daily between Northern Virginia and Montgomery County, Maryland, and the lack of bridge connections forces them to make a lengthy, circuitous journey involving the Dulles Toll Road and I-66 Corridors, Capital Beltway, American Legion Bridge, and I-270, thereby unnecessarily congesting these facilities and wasting hundreds of thousands of hours of time and millions of gallons of fuel; and

WHEREAS, this outer suburb/outer suburb travel trend is expected to accelerate in the next 25 years; and

WHEREAS, the existing financially constrained long range transportation plan for the Washington, D.C., area contains a capacity deficiency of 300,000 vehicles per day on the outer Potomac River Bridges; and

WHEREAS, the feasibility of the use of tolls should be examined as a method of payment for all construction and operation costs of any such bridges; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED by the House of Delegates, the Senate concurring, That the Department of Transportation be requested to provide a report updating previous Department of Transportation studies on the benefits of constructing one or more limited access parkways and bridges connecting Virginia and Maryland between the American Legion Bridge and the north-south powerline alignment in Loudoun County. The linkages examined should be in addition to and south of that involved in the environmental impact study associated with the Western Transportation Corridor. The Department is requested also to consider and report on the feasibility of the use of tolls to fund all or part of the construction and operation of such facilities. The Department shall request the Transportation Coordinating Council to comment on the report of the Department of Transportation.

All agencies of the Commonwealth shall assist the Department, upon request.

The Department shall complete its work in time to submit its findings and recommendations to the Governor and the 1999 Session of the General Assembly as provided in the procedures of the Division of Legislative Automated Systems for the processing of legislative documents.