HOT Lanes Loom as Major Stories in the Metro DC Area This Year

The Washington Post’s Dr. Gridlock writes, “The biggest story on the D.C. region’s highways this new year will be the opening of the high-occupancy tolling system on I-66 inside the Capital Beltway. But this also is the year when the state of Virginia and its private partners plan to start building the HOT lanes outside the Beltway. . . . This outside project ultimately will be a much bigger deal than the inside one, despite the many attention-getting controversies over the inner HOT lanes.” The doctor talks with Patrick Rhode of Cintra US. “While I-66 would be [Cintra’s] first operation in the Washington region, Rhode said Cintra is confident. ‘We’re very selective as a company to where we invest,’ he said. ‘We believe that this is very similar to projects we’ve had success on in the past.’”