I'm getting ready for my annual Mother's Day roadtrip. Once again we will be going south to the beautiful North Virginia suburbs. And that got me thinking about something I'd only recently become aware of as my new GPS unit showed me another way to Escape from The Beltway!TM (Soon to be a major motion picture event from NeverSail Films)
It's the Dulles Greenway road, or the second half of VA 267. It is a 12.53 mile long divided highway linking Dulles Airport with Leesburg, Virginia. It's actually a damned nice road. Perhaps especially compared to the Beltway and the other roads leading there from the area of Northern Virginia that I visit. Outside of commuting hours it's a wide open road, 65 MPH speed limit, and scant traffic. It's also a toll road, charging between $4.75 and $5.80 (by my casual understanding of the toll rates. I may be mistaken on specifics, calling it ~$5.00 a trip is a fair approximation, I believe.) depending upon congestion pricing for two axle vehicles like most Personally Owned Vehicles. I've paid it before and likely will again, because even after 10 AM I-66 and I-495 are often congested and frustrating to drive.
Having said that, I hate everything about why this road exists.
Their website's About page puts their finger precisely upon the reasons this road makes me angry.
"The Greenway is a leading example of the current trend towards the privatization of public facilities."
The website is promoting not just their own project, but trying to use it to leverage the idea in people's minds that public-private partnerships, where the private sector takes over some public work is an unequivocal good thing. They boast of how their road, which was built as a private enterprise, reduces commute and travel times for the people using it by about 50% for the comparable drive. I don't think there's any way to disagree with that.
It's still a horrible, horrible idea - and one that I doubt could work outside of geographic and population circumstances similar to those that exist around the Northern Virginia Beltway communities. Are those circumstances repeated in other parts of the country? Sure, around select cities. But as a general case? Not really.
This isn't a general solution to congestion problems in the DC area. This is a specific solution for people who work in the DC area and can afford to live in Leesburg. And, hey, when the road isn't being put to use by their primary market, people like yours truly can benefit from the chance to skip the local road congestion and stop lights. So what's the problem?
In short, it's the toll, and mindset behind it. I'm actually living in a state with one of the early modern toll highway systems in the US: NY and the NY Thruway. It's a toll road that often on the local level is paralleled by various local access roads that are slower than the Thruway, and have stop lights. It is unfair to act as though the sole source of revenue for the Thruway is it's tolls, there's also concessions income - and that's not true for the Greenway. But for both roads (treating the octopus of the NY Thruway as one road for these purposes.) the vast majority of their income comes from tolls.
According to the 2018 Thruway budget book, in 2017 they collected $726 million in tolls on the entirety of the nearly 500 mile road. The Greenway on the other hand in 2017 generated $92 million from toll revenue. (both figures are approximate.) I can't seem to find the numbers for trips on both roads at this time, and I really haven't the energy to go hunting. But what I believe to be important here is this: An end-to-end toll on the Thruway, defined as Exit 1 in NYC, to Exit 61 at the PA State border is $22.75 cash price. An end-to-end toll on the Greenway varies but is approximately $5.00. The cost in toll per mile of road is more interesting: NY Thruway: 4.5 cents per mile; on shorter haul trips on the thruway such as one might choose while avoiding local access roads the cost per mile seems to go up to abut 5 cents per mile. On the Greenway? Using that $5.00 toll figure (which is admittedly inaccurate) the toll cost is 40 cents per mile. Granted that's covering both the loan debt and some profit for the owner/operator, but it's hard to see how this public private partnership is truly improving things for the population as a whole. Instead it's creating a little enclave for people who can afford a daily cost of $10 (each way) to save half an hour of time.
It's an expensive road for the haves, not a road supported for all.
And we shouldn't look to this as a model for the future.
