How do you pack the construction of four new 14-mile- long lanes, 58 new bridges and 900,000 sq ft of retaining wall into an active highway carrying 200,000 daily vehicles and do it in four years? Virginia’s Capital Beltway expansion team would answer: Pack all the players into one room—early and often. Then, as Virginia Dept. of Transportation senior project manager Larry Cloyed says, the team has to live by the motto “Get it done.”
The $1.35-billion reconstruction of the Capital Beltway—including the addition of two high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes in each direction—is being performed by a private concessionaire that will also operate and maintain that section over 80 years as part of an overall $2-billion, public-private partnership (P3). This type of arrangement is gaining an increasing foothold throughout the United States. For example, two deals were inked in Texas this year, two projects are under way in Florida, and a transit P3 contract was awarded in Denver.