The business community in Arlington has never been a fan of the Arlington County Board's lawsuit fighting proposed Interstate-395 HOT lanes. The county's decision last week to add Federal Highway Administrator Victor Mendez as a defendant in the suit, in both his professional capacity and as an individual, just adds insult to injury.

The county filed a lawsuit against the federal and Virginia departments of transportation a year ago today. The suit argues that the HOT lanes project, which would make high-occupancy lanes on the Beltway and I-395 accessible to single-occupancy vehicles if they pay a toll, unfairly favors "a financially-able privileged class of suburban and rural, primarily Caucasian residents from Stafford and Spotsylvania Counties ... to the detriment of minority communities in Arlington."

A motion to amend that suit filed Aug. 13 adds Mendez as a defendant. "Bringing people in as an individual, they have to pay for their attorneys out of their own pocket," says Philip Keating, chairman of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce and an attorney at Bean, Kinney and Korman. "Accusing people of intentionally discriminating against people based on race is a particularly odious charge to throw against someone."

Ultimately, though, businesses are just "ticked off" that the county has spent more than $1 million to date on the suit, and on blocking a transportation project they see as vital. "The business community as a whole has been pushing the state and local governments to solve the transportation problem in the region," Keating says. "To stand in the way of creative ways to create more capacity on I-95 ... people don’t think it’s credible that the motivation isn’t to just kill the whole project."

The county board has argued that the HOT lanes need to be analyzed further to account for potential negative effects on residents living close to the corridor. "Arlington has a number of concerns about whether HOT lanes are the best way to address the serious transportation problem in the I-95/395 corridor," Chairman Jay Fisette wrote in a letter to the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance in June. But, "It has never been the County’s goal to prevent the project from advancing," he added.

Additional analysis "is essential ... to avoid the certain gridlock that will engulf the HOV lanes and local streets at each access point, and further degrade the already seriously impaired air quality in the corridor," Fisette wrote.

When we tried to reach Mendez, a spokesperson from the Federal Highway Administration said that the agency does not comment on litigation. Arlington County Attorney Steve MacIsaac did not immediately return calls for comment.