Interstate 66
Interstate 66 is a 76.32 mile east–west interstate highway in the eastern United States. The highway runs from an interchange with I-81 near Middletown, Virginia, on its western end to an interchange with U.S. Route 29 in Washington, D.C., at the eastern terminus. The route parallels State Route 55 from its western terminus at I-81 to Gainesville, and US 29 from Gainesville to its eastern terminus in Washington. I-66 is unrelated to US 66, which was located in the Midwest-West region of the United States.
The E Street Expressway is a spur from I-66 into the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C.
Route description
Virginia
Interstate 81 to Dunn Loring
I-66 begins at a directional T interchange with I-81 near Middletown, Virginia. It heads east as a four-lane freeway and meets US 522/US 340 at a partial cloverleaf interchange. The two routes head south to Front Royal and north to Lake Frederick. I-66 continues east and crosses the Blue Ridge at Manassas Gap, paralleling SR 55 and meeting US 17 at a partial interchange with no access from southbound US 17 to westbound I-66. SR 55 also merges onto the freeway at this interchange, forming a three-way concurrency that ends near Marshall, with SR 55 leaving along with U.S. Route 17 Business and US 17 leaving at the next exit. The freeway then passes through Bull Run Mountain at Thoroughfare Gap.Expanding to six lanes, and continuing to parallel SR 55, I-66 enters the towns of Haymarket and Gainesville, reaching interchanges with US 15 and US 29 in each town, respectively. The highway then expands to ten lanes and heads to the south of Manassas National Battlefield Park and to the north of Bull Run Regional Park. The highway reaches another interchange with US 29 and passes to the north of Centreville and meets SR 28 at an interchange with cloverleaf and stack elements to it. SR 28 heads north to Dulles International Airport and south to Manassas.
The freeway then meets SR 286, US 50, and SR 123 at a series of interchanges providing access to D.C. suburbs. The Orange Line and Silver Line of the Washington Metro begin to operate in the median here, as the highway reaches a large interchange with the I-495.
I-66 has two tolled HOT lanes from US 29 in Gainesville to the Capital Beltway.
Dunn Loring to Theodore Roosevelt Bridge
The section of I-66 in Virginia east of the Capital Beltway is named the Custis Memorial Parkway, a toll road with variable tolls during peak hours. The road narrows to four lanes as it heads through Arlington County. The parkway meets SR 7 at a full interchange. SR 267 meets the parkway with an eastbound entrance and westbound exit. Continuing through neighborhoods, the route yet again meets US 29 at an incomplete interchange and continues east into Arlington County, meeting SR 120 and continuing to Arlington County. It meets Spout Run Parkway and enters Rosslyn. The freeway turns southeast and runs in between US 29 as it approaches the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge, reaching another eastbound entrance and westbound exit as US 29 continues north on the Key Bridge. It then has a complex interchange with George Washington Parkway and SR 110, providing access to Alexandria and the Pentagon, respectively. US 50 merges onto the highway with a westbound exit and eastbound entrance and the two traverse the bridge.The "Custis Memorial Parkway" name commemorates the Custis family, several of whose members played prominent roles in Northern Virginia's history. Because of its terminus in the Shenandoah Valley, some early planning documents refer to I-66 as the "Shenandoah Freeway," although the name did not enter common use.
Between the Capital Beltway and the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge, the eastbound roadway is a high-occupancy toll road from 5:30 to 9:30 am, and the westbound roadway is an HOT road from 3:00 to 7:00 pm. E-ZPass is required for all vehicles except motorcycles, including Dulles Airport users. I-66 is free during those times for HOV-3+ drivers with an E-ZPass Flex and for motorcycles. Other drivers must pay a variable toll depending on traffic levels. Outside of these hours, I-66 is free for all drivers to use.
Washington, D.C.
In Washington, D.C., the route quickly turns north, separating from US 50. The highway interchanges with the E Street Expressway spur before passing beneath Virginia and New Hampshire Avenues in a short tunnel, also running on the east side of the Watergate complex. After an indirect interchange with the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, the highway terminates at a pair of ramps leading to the Whitehurst Freeway and L Street. The portion of Interstate 66 within Washington, D.C., is known as the Potomac River Freeway.E Street Expressway
The E Street Expressway is a 480 meter long spur of I-66 that begins at an interchange with the interstate just north of the Roosevelt Bridge. It proceeds east, has an interchange with Virginia Avenue Northwest, and terminates at 20th Street Northwest. From there, traffic continues along E Street Northwest to 17th Street Northwest near the White House, the Old Executive Office Building, George Washington University, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Westbound traffic from 17th Street takes a one-block segment of New York Avenue to the expressway entrance at 20th and E streets northwest. The expressway and the connecting portions of E Street and New York Avenue are part of the National Highway System.In 1963, the construction of the E Street Expressway caused the demolition of multiple buildings of the Old Naval Observatory.
;Exit list
The entire route is in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C. All exits are unnumbered.
History
Virginia
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 ; and then along the Rosslyn Spur of the Washington and Old Dominion Railroad 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 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 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 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 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 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. In 1972 the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of ACT, technically blocking any construction. The US Supreme Court upheld the ruling in favor of ACT later that same year.
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 was submitted. The EIS proposed an eight-lane limited access expressway from the Capital Beltway to the area near Spout Run Parkway. Six lanes would branch off at the Parkway and cross the Potomac River via a proposed Three Sisters Bridge. Another six lanes would branch off to the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge. In November, a modified design was submitted, reducing the eight lanes to six. However, in 1975, VDOT disapproved the six-lane design.
The parties then agreed on experts to conduct air quality and noise studies for VDOT, selecting the firm of ESL Incorporated, the expert hired originally by ACT. In 1976, United States Secretary of Transportation William Thaddeus Coleman Jr. intervened. On January 4, 1977, Coleman approved federal aid for a much narrower, four-lane limited access highway between the Capital Beltway and the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge. As part of the deal, Virginia officials agreed to provide more than $100 million in construction work and funds to help build the Metro system, which has tracks down the I-66 median to a station at Vienna in Fairfax County; to build a multiuse trail from Rosslyn to Falls Church; and to limit rush-hour traffic mainly to car pools. 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 in Rosslyn, near the Virginia end of the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge.
The Custis Trail, the trail along I-66 built between Rosslyn and Falls Church as a concession, opened in the summer of 1982, before the highway was complete. SR 267 between I-66 and the airport opened in 1984. The Metrorail in the median of I-66 between Ballston and Vienna, another concession, opened on June 7, 1986.
After opening, the restrictions on use began to loosen. In 1983, Virginia dropped the HOV requirement from 4 to 3 and then from 3 to 2 in 1994. In 1992, motorcycles were allowed.
On October 9, 1999, Public Law 106-69 transferred from the federal government to the Commonwealth of Virginia the authority for the operation, maintenance, and construction of I-66 between Rosslyn and the Capital Beltway.
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 through Arlington County, Virginia, 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. 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 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. The project began in 2004 and finished in 2015.