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,今年在德克萨斯州达成了两笔交易，在佛罗里达州正在进行两个项目，并在丹佛授予了Transit新利18备用网址 P3合同。

Informed by lessons learned from previous efforts with regard to design-build, tolling mechanisms, revenue sources and sharing of risk, the Capital Beltway project, entering its midway point, serves as a poster child for the new wave of P3s in America. The new toll lanes also will be the first in the U.S. to double as high-occupancy vehicle lanes. Vehicles with three or more passengers won’t have to pay tolls.

得克萨斯州欧文的Fluor Corp.是为数不多的在P3中获得冗长简历的美国公司之一，既是特许经营团队的合作伙伴，又是设计建造团队Prime的合作伙伴。特许经营者领导澳大利亚的跨城市也将担任收费运营商。

他们的双重角色意味着承担建筑和收入风险。“我们愿意承担这种风险，” Capital Electway Express LLC的特许公司总经理Tim Steinhilber说。“我们长期来这里。”

建造is daunting along every mile, including $260 million worth of new infrastructure that is being added to an extremely dense urban corridor, with dozens of new access points to major employment centers. The north-south stretch constantly crisscrosses and connects with other busy arterials and highways as well as, in Tysons Corner, the $2.6-billion first phase of the Dulles metro project. There, piers being built for the elevated guideway directly cross the beltway.

The existing four lanes in each direction must be kept open during rush hour, even as the team builds two new lanes on the highway perimeters to make room for the HOT lanes that will run in the middle. A dozen interchanges will receive upgrades, and access ramps will link the HOT lanes with numerous points, including other carpool lanes on I-66, I-95 and the Dulles Toll Road.

“斯普林菲尔德（Springfield）和杜勒斯（Dulles）之间的每个现有的桥梁都必须拆除和替换，并且[这些桥梁]携带了很多交通，”由Fluor and Lane Construction Corp领导的设计建设团队副项目主任Bob Portley说。。，柴郡，康涅狄格州。

在许多情况下，桥梁分为三个阶段：拆除一半，将交通切换到另一半，然后重建上半场，然后将流量切换到新的半场，最后拆除并重建下半部分。波特利说，在五种情况下，可以基于全新的一致性建造新的桥梁，从而节省了时间。

Three bridges have been accelerated to save up to a year in schedule. For example, one bridge was originally to be demolished and rebuilt in thirds. “We were able to demolish one-third, build a replacement third, and squeeze the traffic into that third,” says Portley. “Then we could build the rest in one go.”

On the south end of the beltway segment, the team is building one precast concrete girder bridge and seven steel- plate girder bridges, as long as 2,000 ft, for the Springfield Interchange, which recently received a $650-million widening in seven phases. VDOT asked the design-build team to...