The Virginia General Assembly has approved that, beginning July 1, 2008, vehicles displaying clean fuel license plates with a white background, registered before July 1, 2006 may travel on any open HOV lane at any time between July 1, 2008 and June 30, 2009. There is no limit on the number of passengers in these vehicles.

Vehicles displaying clean fuel plates with a blue background (registered on or after July 1, 2006) are not permitted to drive on the I_95/395 HOV lanes in Northern Virginia without the required number of passengers. These vehicles are allowed to utilize all other HOV lanes in Virginia during HOV hours, regardless of the number of passengers, including I_66 and the Dulles Toll Road.

Loudoun County Public Schools are feeling the pinch from escalating fuel costs. The county has 740 school busses which run on diesel fuel. The escalating price of fuel exceeds what was budgeted for the current fiscal year and for the next, which begins in less than two months. The school system already has supplemented its current fiscal year fuel budget with $780,000 from other utility accounts.

If prices continue to increase, the schools would need to look at finding additional funding or cutting back certain services. This could mean making sure all buses are filled to capacity, transporting two athletic teams on the same bus or limiting field trips to locations closer to home.

The government of Loudoun County also is keeping an eye on fuel costs. The county doesn’t pay all of the taxes that people do on gasoline purchases, so there remains some breathing room before what the county pays on gasoline purchases matches or surpasses what was budgeted for next year.

Source: Leesburg Today

Plans for widening the Capital Beltway calls for adding two additional outside lanes in each direction, and then dedicating the two inside lanes as “High Occupancy Toll” Lanes, or HOT Lanes. These expanded lanes will function in part like the HOV lanes and will be free for carpools with three or more people in the vehicles. The HOT lanes will also be open to private cars with one or two passengers for a fee.

The addition of high-occupancy toll lanes on the Capital Beltway will bring with it the replacement of dozens of deteriorating overpasses, bridges and ramps, much of it for the first time since the Beltway’s opening four decades ago, officials say.

The HOT lanes project will bring 59 new structures with the replacement of four bridges, 19 overpasses and four ramps, and the addition of 17 completely new overpasses and 15 new ramps, said VDOT spokesman Steve Titunik.

Local officials have long worried that the HOT lanes, coupled with a bevy of other large scale improvements throughout Northern Virginia, will worsen an already intolerable traffic problem during their construction. The impact of the construction will have on traffic is unknown.

Source: Examiner.com

One Loudoun, a proposed upscale mixed-use village and future home to the World Trade Center Dulles Airport, will begin ground breaking in the fall of 2008, according to One Loudoun’s website.

The Trade Center will be located at the southwest corner of Route 7 and Loudoun County Parkway on 360 acres and is expected to provide the County with significant tax revenues.

One Loudoun will offer offices, upscale retail, luxury hotel, movie theater, and homes built around a central park setting. One Loudoun Place is projected to generate up to 14,000 new jobs and promote both international trade & domestic investment from around the world.

The project will include construction of an interchange at the intersection of Route 7 and Ashburn Village Boulevard, giving much needed traffic relief on Route 7. It will also donate a new elementary school site and construct new ball fields for public use on an adjacent county-owned site.

In May or June, 2008, Gov. Tim Kaine will propose legislation to the House and Senate that will restore two regional transportation funding districts voided by the state Supreme Court and also cover growing cost overruns for highway maintenance statewide.

He will require that the legislation passed include enough money to keep pace with increasing road repair and upkeep costs and not shift the political burden of raising taxes onto local govements.

On February 29, 2008, the Virginia Supreme Court revocated the authority of the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority (NVTA), an unelected regional body, to raise seven taxes and fees to pay for local road projects in Northern Virginia.

On January 1, 2008, the Virginia Commissioner of Motor Vehicles, the Commissioner of Taxation and Loudoun County Circuit Court began collecting the following taxes & fees:

2% Transient Occupancy Tax

Grantor’s Tax of 40 Cents per $100 of valuation

2% Tax on Vehicle Rentals

Safety Inspection Fee of $10

Initial Vehicle Registration Fee of 1%

5% Sales Tax on Auto Repair

Regional Vehicle Registration Fee of $10

NVTA is developing a refund plan for the taxes and fees that have been paid to date involving state and local authorities as well as various business entities. None of these funds have been spent, and the Authority anticipates providing full refunds as soon as possible.

Dulles International Airport continues to grow with the opening of the new $137 million 15-gate expansion of Concourse B. The airport’s newest wing will service domestic flights and is part of a continuing expansion which includes the intra airport train system already under construction as well as plans for a fourth runway.

The Virginia Department of Transportation is planning to add a second left-turn lane at the eastbound approach to the intersection of Route 7 and Georgetown Pike. The VDOT project will also widen a relatively short stretch of Route 7 to three lanes in each direction.

For many Route 7 commuters from Loudoun County, the intersection adds to a tough commute. Eastbound drivers trying to make a left onto Georgetown Pike overflow from the turn lane and plug up one of Route 7’s two main travel lanes, squeezing drivers into the remaining lane and slowing their trip toward Reston and Tysons Corner.

VDOT officials said the widening project would speed traffic along Route 7 and get rid of a hazardous blockage. "If they are not in the turn lane, and they are sticking out into traffic, that’s dangerous," VDOT spokesman Mike P. Salmon said. "We want to alleviate cars backing up onto Route 7, where cars are traveling at a relatively high rate of speed." Drivers also make risky U_turns at Reston Parkway to more easily get onto Georgetown Pike, he said.

Source: The Washington Post

 Until a few weeks ago, officials representing the state, Metro and the regional airport authority believed that the Dulles Rail plan was on track and likely to gain Federal Transit Administration approval by the end of January. The U.S. transportation officials have now denied the $900 million grant that had been counted upon to the help fund the $5 billion project.

Several private investors have expressed  interest in funding the Dulles rail line after learning about the decision from U.S. transportation officials. The possibility of funding the project through companies would attract strong opposition from those who believe the project is far too valuable to hand over to for_profit corporations. But this may be the only option to keeping the project alive.

Source: The Washington Post, Monday January 28, 2008

According to the Washington Post Newspaper, government and project sources said the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) remain skeptical of the plan to extend Metrorail to Dulles International Airport and might reject it, even though their consultants recently found that the proposal meets requirements for full funding. The concern is about millions of dollars in cost overruns and several years delay in completing the project as was done on the Big Dig project in Boston, run by the contractor in charge of extending metro rail to Dulles Airport project.

The Virginia, Maryland & D.C. mayor are urging the FTA to approve the rail line. There has been more than 40 years of efforts to connect the nation’s capital by rail to the area’s largest airport to transform Tysons Corner Virginia to a Metro_accessible downtown.