The Martin Luther King Jr. Freeway carries U.S. 58 after the Midtown Tunnel to its surface-street connection on London Boulevard in Portsmouth. As part of the long-term plan, regional leaders and VDOT looked to extend the freeway from its terminus at London Boulevard down to I-264, creating a highway-speed alternate that connected I-264 to the Midtown Tunnel and the new Western Freeway. Efforts to extend the MLK Freeway have been in the works with VDOT as far back as the early 1990s, when the agency completed its initial environmental assessment. The project received a new environmental assessment in 1999, when VDOT began pursuing the parallel Midtown Tunnel.
