It seems like all of Western Fairfax, Prince William, and Loudoun counties have come out against the Bi-County Parkway. VDOT and other state agencies are for it, and VDOT seems to have money for its construction.

I have a proposal that will avoid this debate, and improve access to Dulles Airport, one of the main reasons given for needing to build the road:

Use the money for the Bi-County Parkway and instead extend Rt 28 north into Maryland by building a bridge over the Potomac River and connect this limited-access road to I-270/I-370 in Gaithersburg. Make it a toll bridge.

I believe this will improve access to Dulles Airport considerably. It might actually take passengers away from BWI since Marylanders will be much more easily able to get to Dulles. I also believe truck traffic from the north will be much more likely to take this route to Dulles than 234, with all its stoplights, from the south.

There should be no complaints about increased traffic on local roads since this would be building a new road where no other alternative already exists. Adding a toll should not be controversial since, again, there is no other nearby alternative which drivers could use to avoid the toll.

Additionally, I belive this road would improve existing bad traffic conditions on I-66, the Dulles Toll Road, and the American Legion Bridge.

This bridge has been proposed before, it was to be called the Techway. The State of Maryland seems to be the primary reason this isn't getting built now. But Maryland sucks anyway so this is to be expected.

Tell me why this shouldn't be built.

KeepOnTruckin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It seems like all of Western Fairfax, Prince
> William, and Loudoun counties have come out
> against the Bi-County Parkway. VDOT and other
> state agencies are for it, and VDOT seems to have
> money for its construction.
>
> I have a proposal that will avoid this debate, and
> improve access to Dulles Airport, one of the main
> reasons given for needing to build the road:
>
> Use the money for the Bi-County Parkway and
> instead extend Rt 28 north into Maryland by
> building a bridge over the Potomac River and
> connect this limited-access road to I-270/I-370 in
> Gaithersburg. Make it a toll bridge.
>
> I believe this will improve access to Dulles
> Airport considerably. It might actually take
> passengers away from BWI since Marylanders will be
> much more easily able to get to Dulles. I also
> believe truck traffic from the north will be much
> more likely to take this route to Dulles than 234,
> with all its stoplights, from the south.
>
> There should be no complaints about increased
> traffic on local roads since this would be
> building a new road where no other alternative
> already exists. Adding a toll should not be
> controversial since, again, there is no other
> nearby alternative which drivers could use to
> avoid the toll.
>
> Additionally, I belive this road would improve
> existing bad traffic conditions on I-66, the
> Dulles Toll Road, and the American Legion Bridge.
>
> This bridge has been proposed before, it was to be
> called the Techway. The State of Maryland seems to
> be the primary reason this isn't getting built
> now. But Maryland sucks anyway so this is to be
> expected.
>
> Tell me why this shouldn't be built.

It should be built, but it won't because of NIMBY opposition. Maryland is reflexively anti-highway (the ICC and ETL lanes on I-95 north of Baltimore are the exception and were financed by MdTA) and there are strong (wealthy) interests in Montgomery, Loudoun, and western Fairfax Counties that make building impossible.

Also Maryland won't do anything that has ANY chance of taking airport traffic away from BWI. There's a school of thought that one of the reasons they've dragged their feet so long about doing something with the clusterfuck that is the Legion Bridge and 495 to the 270 split is because it would pull more Marylanders into Virginia.

In a hypothetical world where these constraints don't exist, there's still the issue of financing. Even with the Governor's transportation bill the costs for a new bridge would be in the billions.

I don't know if I would say "all" of Fairfax, PW, and Loudoun oppose the BCP. Candland took a poll during a recent town hall and 49% voted against it with the other 51% either supporting it or are just undecided. The most vocal opponents of this road are a handful of rural landowners that are classic NIMBYs. They don't care about the "quality of life" of their fellow residents, just themselves. I guarantee if they proposed a north-south highway away from their farms you wouldn't hear a peep from them.

What's also ironic is how the opponents of this road team up with smart-growth groups like the CSG and PEC. Kind of funny when you live in a McMansion in the exurbs and say we need more smart-growth. By "smart-growth", they mean growth away from THEM. They've been fighting this road for decades saying it will induce sprawl, and then turn around and criticize VDOT for planning to build the road so close to the sprawl that happened regardless. 

Also, they constantly clamor to "fix east-west first", but just about all of their proposed alternatives to building the BCP are actually in the works to get done anyway, so they really don't have a leg to stand on here in 2013. If you call them out on any of their contradictory statements you get called things like a "moron" and a "developer's whore". To them they just can't admit that some people might actually keep an open mind about the project.