Following Loudoun County's successful implementation of the Dulles Greenway as the first public-private partnership (P3) project in the Interstate Highway era in 1993, Virginia passed its landmark Public-Private Transportation Act (PPTA) in 1995. The Commonwealth embarked on its first P3 project with the Pocahontas Parkway south of Richmond in 1998.
In June 2002, Fluor Daniel (now Fluor Enterprises), a private engineering, procurement, construction, maintenance and project management company based in Irving, Texas, submitted an unsolicited proposal to VDOT to design, build, finance, operate and maintain (DBFOM) HOT lanes on the Capital Beltway on a P3 basis. Fluor would finance the project by borrowing against future toll revenues generated by the managed lanes. The company also proposed a streamlined design that would eliminate the need to purchase private properties and construct the improvements within the existing publicly owned highway right-of-way. This reduced the project cost significantly and eased public opposition to the project as originally proposed by VDOT.