Virginia with the
Metrorail Orange Line in the median. The left lane is an
HOV lane, and the right shoulder is used as a travel lane during rush hour; both lanes were widened as part of the Transform 66 project. I-66 was first proposed in 1956—shortly after
Congress established the Highway Trust Fund—as a highway to connect
Strasburg, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley with Washington, D.C.. During the planning stages, the Virginia Highway Department considered four possible locations for the highway inside the Beltway; in 1959, it settled on one that followed the Fairfax Drive–Bluemont Drive corridor between the Beltway and
SR 120 (Glebe Road); and then along the Rosslyn Spur of the
Washington and Old Dominion Railroad (W&OD) between Glebe Road and
Rosslyn in
Arlington County. The route west of 123 was determined earlier. Two other routes through Arlington neighborhoods and one along Arlington Boulevard were rejected due to cost or opposition. I-66 was originally to connect to the
Three Sisters Bridge, but, as that bridge was canceled, it was later designed to connect to the
Potomac River Freeway via the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge. On December 16, 1961, the first piece of I-66, an section from US 29 at
Gainesville to
US 29 at Centreville was opened. A disconnected section near
Delaplane in
Fauquier County opened next in May 1962. In July 1962, the highway department bought the Rosslyn Spur of the W&OD for $900,000 (equivalent to $ in ) and began clearing the way, such that, by 1965, all that was left was dirt and the remains of 200 homes cleared for the highway. In February 1965, the state contracted to buy of the W&OD from Herndon to Alexandria for $3.5 million (equivalent to $ in ) and the
Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, by then the owners of the line, petitioned the
Interstate Commerce Commission to let them abandon it. The purchase would eliminate the need to build grade separation where the railroad crossed I-66 and would provide of right-of-way for the highway, saving the state millions. The abandonment proceedings took more than three years, as customers of the railway and transit advocates fought to keep the railroad open and delayed work on the highway. During that time, on November 10, 1967, the
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) announced that it had come to an agreement with the Highway Department that would give them a two-year option to buy a stretch of the right-of-way from Glebe Road to the Beltway, where I-66 was to be built, and run mass transit on the median of it. The W&OD ran its last train during the summer of 1968, clearing the way for construction to begin in Arlington County. While the state waited on the W&OD, work continued elsewhere. The Theodore Roosevelt Bridge opened on June 23, 1964, and, in November of that year, the section from Centreville to the Beltway opened. A extension from the Roosevelt Bridge to Rosslyn opened in October 1966. After the
Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT; then known as the Virginia Department of Highways) took possession of the mainline W&OD right-of-way in 1968, they began to run into opposition as the
highway revolts of the late 1960s and early 1970s took hold. In 1970, the Arlington County Board requested new hearings, and opponents began to organize marches. At the same time, the federal government wanted to pave the right-of-way from Washington Boulevard and Glebe Road to Rosslyn for an experimental busway, which Arlington County opposed, in part because they thought it might delay and add to the cost of I-66. A significant delay was encountered when the
Arlington Coalition on Transportation (ACT) filed a lawsuit in
Federal District Court in 1971 opposing the Arlington County portion of the project. The group objected to that urban segment due to concerns over
air quality,
noise, unwanted traffic congestion, wasteful spending, impacts on mass transit, and wasted energy by auto travel. Again, work continued elsewhere, and, in October 1971, the section from I-81 to US 340/US 522 north of Front Royal opened. In July 1974, a final
environmental impact statement (EIS) was submitted. The EIS proposed an eight-lane
limited access expressway from the
Capital Beltway to the area near
Spout Run Parkway. Three more lawsuits would follow, but work began on August 8, 1977, moments after US District Court Judge Owen R. Lewis denied an injunction sought by highway opponents. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the highway's final miles were built. A section from Delaplane to US 17 east of Marshall was completed in two sections in 1978 and 1979. The section from US 340 to Delaplane was completed in August 1979. A section between US 17 in Marshall and US 15 in
Haymarket opened in December 1979, with the gap between Haymarket and Gainesville closed on December 19, 1980. On December 22, 1982, the final section of I-66 opened between the Capital Beltway and US 29 (Lee Highway) in Rosslyn, near the Virginia end of the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge. Because I-66 is the only interstate highway traveling west from Washington, D.C., into
Northern Virginia, traffic on the road is often extremely heavy. For decades, there has been talk of widening I-66 from two to three lanes each way inside the Capital Beltway (I-495) through Arlington County, although many Arlington residents are adamantly opposed to this plan. In 2004–2005, Virginia studied options for widening the highway inside the Beltway, including the prospect of implementing a one-lane-plus-shoulder extension on westbound I-66 within the Beltway (in an attempt to reduce congestion for people commuting away from D.C.). They later settled on three planned "spot improvements" meant to ease traffic congestion on westbound I-66 inside the Capital Beltway. The first improvement, a zone between Fairfax Drive and Sycamore Street, started in summer 2010 and was finished in December 2011. For this project, the entrance ramp acceleration lane and the exit ramp deceleration lanes were lengthened to form a continuous lane between both ramps. The shoulder lane can carry emergency vehicles and can be used in emergency situations. The second one widened between the Washington Boulevard onramp and the ramp to the Dulles Access Road. Work on it began in 2013 and finished in 2015. The third project, between Lee Highway/
Spout Run and Glebe Road, was completed in 2022. In Gainesville, Virginia, the Gainesville Interchange Project upgraded the interchange between US 29 and I-66 for those and many other roads due to rapid development and accompanying heavy traffic in the Gainesville and Haymarket area. I-66's overpasses were reconstructed to accommodate nine lanes (six general purpose, two HOV, and one
collector–distributor eastbound) and lengthened for the expansion of US 29 to six lanes. These alterations were completed in June 2010. In 2014–2015, US 29 was largely grade-separated in the area, including an interchange at its current intersection with
SR 619 (Linton Hall Road). The project began in 2004 and finished in 2015.
Transform 66 in
Centreville, Virginia The
Virginia Department of Transportation announced its public-private partnership with the
Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation, and the private partner, I-66 Express Mobility Partners, with an estimating $3.7 billion dollars for transportation/road improvements along the I-66 corridor. The project, known as Transform 66, opened to traffic in November 2022 and the HOV rule changed from HOV-2+ to HOV-3+ in early December 2022.
Timeline in
Washington, D.C. In 2015, the
Virginia Department of Transportation planning board added I-66 HOT lanes to their list of priority projects for the I-66 corridor. The projects have sparked opposition between residents and community businesses over the direction of this region's future infrastructure planning. The VDOT established a "Transform 66" website on regional traffic issues. Residents living within the I-66 corridor have set up "Transform 66 Wisely", a website describing local community impacts that the VDOT projects may cause. Local business groups and
Chambers of Commerce located near the affected areas, however, supported the improvements. Residents along the I-66 corridor, such as in Arlington County, have resisted I-66 widening proposals for many years. The local Stenwood Elementary School would lose its attached field, leaving it with blacktop-only recess space. In an April 16, 2015, letter to the Virginia Secretary of Transportation, members of the 1st, 8th, 10th, and 11th districts of Congress wrote that VDOT research noted that, during peak hours, 35 percent of eastbound cars and 50 percent of westbound cars are HOV violators. Future federal steps for VDOT include
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review, obligation of federal funds, certification that the conversion to tolled facilities will not "degrade" the existing facility, and potential federal loan guarantee. The Virginia Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) is responsible for overseeing VDOT and allocating highway funding to specific projects. The board has 18 members appointed by the Governor, includes the Virginia Secretary of Transportation,
Aubrey Layne, and is the group that will be making the final decision and allocating funding for VDOT's plans for I-66. In 2016, VDOT announced that it was planning to add express lanes and multimodal transportation improvements to I-66 outside the Beltway (the "Transform 66 Outside the Beltway" improvement project). A decision was also made to move forward with widening I-66 eastbound and make multimodal improvements from the Dulles Airport connector to Ballston, the "Transform 66 Inside the Beltway" improvement project. VDOT also announced during 2016 that it would initiate on I-66 a dynamic tolling system in the peak travel directions during rush hours. On December 4, 2017, VDOT converted of I-66 between US 29 in Rosslyn and the Capital Beltway to an HOV variable
congestion pricing tolling system. The system permits solo drivers to use I-66 during peak travel hours in the appropriate direction if they pay a toll. VDOT designed the price of toll to keep traffic moving at a minimum of and to increase the capacity of the road. Carpools and vanpools (with three or more people), transit, on-duty law enforcement and first responders do not pay a toll. Prices were as high as $47 one-way during the lanes' first weeks of operations, attracting controversy and national media attention. The average speed during the morning rush hour was versus a year before. In 2023, VDOT reported that the average charge to travel the length of the tolled section was $6.31 in mornings and $5.10 in evenings. Only 0.04% of trips cost more than $40, and it was the first time that any trips at all had crossed that threshold since 2020. In 2017, construction began on the "Transform 66 Outside the Beltway" improvement project. The project added of new dynamically-tolled express lanes alongside I-66 from I-495 to University Boulevard in Gainesville. It also built new park and ride facilities, interchange improvements and of expanded multi-use trail. The project was completed in November 2022. Construction on widening eastbound I-66 as part of the "Transform 66 Inside the Beltway" improvement project began in June 2018 and was completed in 2020. The project added a travel lane on eastbound I-66 between the Dulles Access Road and
Fairfax Drive (exit 71) in Ballston, and provided a new ramp-to-ramp direct access connection from eastbound I-66 to the
West Falls Church station at the SR 7 interchange and provided a new bridge for the
W&OD Trail over US 29.
Washington, D.C. and
I-495 In Washington D.C., I-66 was planned to extend east of its current terminus along the North Leg of the
Inner Loop freeway. I-66 would have also met the eastern terminus of the planned
I-266 at US 29, and the western terminus of
I-695 (South Leg Freeway) at US 50; I-266 would have been a parallel route to I-66, providing more direct access to the North Leg from points west, while I-695 would have been an inner-city connector between I-66 and I-95. The final plans for the North Leg Freeway, published in 1971, outlined a six-lane tunnel beneath
K Street, between I-266/US 29 and New York Avenue, where the North Leg would emerge from the tunnel and join with the
Center Leg Freeway (formerly I-95, now I-395); the two routes would run concurrently for before reaching the
Washington Union Station interchange, where I-66 was planned to terminate. Despite the plan to route the North Leg in a tunnel beneath K Street, the intense opposition to previous, scrapped alignments for the D.C. freeway network, which included previous alignments for the North Leg Freeway, led to the mass cancelation of all unbuilt D.C. freeways in 1977, resulting in the truncation of I-66 at US 29. == 66 Parallel Trail ==