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.’”