by Morgan Sweeney
The application by Toll Road Investors Partnership II L.P. to raise tolls on Virginia’s Dulles Greenway is now open to public comment, and a date has been set for the hearing of January 24, 2024.
If the State Corporation Commission approves TRIP II’s application, the new “maximum tolls for most drivers” will be $6.40 during off-peak hours and $8.10 going eastbound during the peak hours of 6:30 a.m. to 9 a.m and driving westbound between 4 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. The current rates are $5.25 and $5.80, respectively.
TRIP II, which operates in partnership with Virginia’s Department of Transportation, has also requested that some changes be made to “streamline” the existing Commission review process and approval of toll increases.
But if different decisions had been made years ago about another popular mode of transportation in the Washington, D.C. area – the Metrorail’s Silver Line – Virginians might have been spared the 40% increase in toll rates that has been proposed now.
Baruch Feigenbaum, senior managing director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation, told The Center Square that the Dulles Greenway and Dulles Toll Road tolls are higher than those on similar roads across the country.
What’s unusual about these tolls, Feigenbaum says, and others have reported, is that a significant portion is being used to pay for the Silver Line, the heavy rail extension of the Washington Metrorail that starts in West Falls Church and ends at the Ashburn station in Loudoun County, stopping at Dulles International Airport along the way.
Going more than four years and at least $250 million over budget, construction of the 23.1-mile Silver Line ultimately took 13 years to complete and $6 billion to build, amounting to about $200 million per mile, Forbes reported. At least by the time Phase I was completed in 2014, the line was “the most expensive transportation project in the Washington region’s history,” according to The Washington Post.
Feigenbaum said that the Greenway and Toll Road rates used to be less noteworthy, attributing the $4-5 increase in toll rates on the Dulles Toll Road in recent years to the project.
“For a long time, the Dulles Toll Road toll was relatively low at $1-2,” Feigenbaum said. “Until about, say, 2010, you would see that they were competitive per mile with other toll roads, but since then, they’ve been above that.”
Another option that’s become a very popular major capital project across the country would have served the public well and been much less expensive, according to Feigenbaum.
“My opinion is that they could have built a different transit option called bus rapid transit for a fraction of the cost,” he said.
Bus rapid transit systems, as the name suggests, don’t make as many stops as the local bus systems that many people are familiar with and “may include dedicated lanes, busways, traffic signal priority, off-board fare collection, elevated platforms and enhanced stations,” according to the Federal Transit Administration.
According to Feigenbaum, the facts weren’t necessarily presented fairly.
“The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (who oversaw construction of the Silver Line) basically made rail look much better in the alternative analysis that they’re required to do by law than it would have been and made bus rapid transit worse by assuming that bus rapid transit would operate in shared lanes on a highway when in fact it would have had a semi-dedicated right of way to avoid traffic lights,” Feigenbaum said.
“I think most independent researchers would have told you that bus rapid transit would have been the better option for this corridor.”
As previously stated, the hearing for the potential toll increases will take place on January 24. A public witness session will be held a few days later, on January 30, followed by a public evidentiary hearing the next day.
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Morgan Sweeney is a staff writer covering Virginia and Maryland for The Center Square. Morgan was an active member of the journalism program as an undergraduate at Hillsdale College and previously freelanced for The Center Square.
Photo “Toll Highway” by MPD01605~commonswiki. CC BY 3.0.
