Ramps to separate Dulles airport, toll road traffic

Virginia transportation officials are planning three new ramps to give motorists heading to and from Washington Dulles International Airport a direct connection to the airport access highway.

Motorists must now cut across several lanes of the Dulles Toll Road when they want to enter or exit the access road to the airport. Transportation officials say those conditions have continued to snarl traffic and spark accidents.

The new ramps would separate airport traffic from vehicles continuing on the Dulles Toll Road, relieving congestion and reducing crashes, said Ronaldo T. Nicholson, a regional transportation program director for Virginia Megaprojects, the state's program for large-scale road projects.

Construction is slated to begin next spring.

The first phase would create an access ramp connecting the eastbound lanes of the airport access road to the southbound lanes of the Capital Beltway. The second phase would be a ramp connecting the eastbound lanes of the access road to the northbound lanes of the Beltway. The final phase would create a ramp connecting the southbound lanes of the Beltway to the westbound lanes of the access road.

The proposed ramps are part of the state's project to build a 14-mile stretch of high-occupancy toll lanes on the Beltway from the Springfield interchange to Old Dominion Drive in McLean.

The access ramp project will cost about $100 million and includes the reconfiguration of existing ramps and the construction of sound walls. Nicholson said the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority is paying $50 million, needed to complete the first two phases. He said the state is working to obtain funding to cover the rest of the cost.