Transportation
The area has two major airports, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport. While flights from the older National Airport (a focus city for US Airways) are restricted for distance, frequency, and flight paths due to the proximity to federal facilities, Dulles is the region's busiest airport in both passenger loadings and aircraft movements, and the sixteenth-busiest airport in the United States by takeoffs and landings in 2007. Dulles is the region's primary international gateway, serves as a hub for United Airlines, and has recently improved its low-cost carrier offerings with the addition of multiple flights by Southwest and jetBlue.
Commuters are served by the Washington Metro subway and the Virginia Railway Express, a commuter railroad. Metro is the second-busiest subway system in the nation; only New York City's subway system carries more passengers. A planned expansion project will extend the system past Dulles Airport into Loudoun County. VRE service is significantly more limited, but nevertheless saw over a year of continuous ridership increase from 2007 into 2008. Bus service is provided by WMATA's Metrobus and several local jurisdictions.
The Washington metropolitan area has the worst traffic in the nation, and Northern Virginia is home to six of the ten worst bottlenecks in the area. To alleviate gridlock, local governments encourage using Metrorail, HOV, carpooling, slugging, and other forms of mass transportation. In 2002, voters rejected a referendum to raise the Virginia sales tax within the region to pay for transportation improvements; several PPTA proposals to increase Beltway and Interstate 95 capacity via toll-funded construction are under consideration by VDOT. Major limited- or partially limited-access highways include Interstates 495 (the Capital Beltway), 95, 395, and 66, the Fairfax County Parkway and adjoining Franconia-Springfield Parkway, the George Washington Memorial Parkway, and the Dulles Toll Road. High-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes are used for commuters and buses on I-66, I-95/395, and the Dulles Toll Road.
Two major regional bottlenecks, the Springfield Interchange and Woodrow Wilson Bridge, were massively reconstructed with completion in 2007 and 2008. Generally, Potomac River crossings remain major choke points; proposals to add crossings (such as near Leesburg or Quantico as part of a long-proposed Outer Beltway) are opposed by Virginia communities near the suggested bridge sites, and by Marylanders who fear that new bridges would bring new housing development to green space in that state. Because of Northern Virginia's high housing costs, tens of thousands of employees there choose more affordable housing far away in outer Virginia exurban counties, or in Prince George's County and Southern Maryland, thus creating tremendous traffic congestion on the Potomac bridges. This situation is much like metropolitan areas of California. Furthermore, localities such as Great Falls, Dranesville, and Clifton impose low-density, large-acreage residential zoning, which forces developers to leapfrog into Loudoun and Prince William counties to build housing, thus increasing commuters' driving distances.
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