Thread by @beyonddc

Legion Bridge HOT lanes are the most predictable highway project in the region. Politically this was a matter of when.

During debates about a potential outer beltway bridge from Dulles to Gaithersburg, "expand Legion" was the moderate compromise that smart growth advocates got behind to stop the worse alternative.

Legion Bridge is only a few years away from needing expensive rehab work anyway. Nobody is seriously calling to tear it down, so may as well modify.

So we'll have to see the details of course, but on the scale of big highway projects, this is probably not the one to use all our capital fighting.

HOT lane projects are never really about buses and nobody should think otherwise, but nevertheless Legion HOT lanes could solve a previously unsolvable transit problem...

Despite lots of population & major job centers like Tysons & Bethesda, WMATA has never been able to make a Legion Bridge bus work, because it gets stuck in jams. They tried maybe 20 years ago and it failed badly.

HOT lanes aren't bus lanes, but with congestion tolling they do allow buses to bypass jams, making a MD-to-VA bus practical.

Hogan/MD has a history of promising multimodal projects and then cutting the multimodal parts after the road is approved.

So transit advocates should def try to lock in funding for bus service as a legally-binding requirement for this, as was done in VA on 66 & 395.

Predictably, they'll say "we need all the toll revenue to pay for the new bridge."

Don't let them. Make them dedicate toll revenue to bus service across the bridge. That bus funding will not make or break their bridge financing.

Anyway, here's the official press release. You know it's full of uncritical praise for making highways bigger.
governor.virginia.gov/newsroom/all-r…

One more thing: Bike/ped.

The press release *does* say there will be a bike/ped component. There'd better be. The comparable Wilson Br has a nice trail.

Also MDOT has been arguing *not* to build a trail as part of its new US-301 bridge, saying "it's not the close-in DC area, there isn't so much need."

Well, according to that argument, there *is* need here at Legion.

wtop.com/dc-transit/201…