Bacon's Rebellion

Drachten, a Dutch town of 50,000, has removed nearly all of its traffic lights, converting major intersections to roundabouts and counting on residents to employ simple courtesy at other intersections. Amazingly, anarchy works. Treehugger.com reports that the new system has “eliminated dangerous crashes and road fatalities and created a surge in bicycle and pedestrian traffic.” (Hat tip to Jim Duncan for pointing me to this story.)

Fascinating. This anecdote invites an examination of the role of culture in creating/mitigating traffic congestion. Could the Drachten experience be replicated elsewhere, or is it something unique to an orderly and courteous people such as the Dutch?

As a thought experiment, try transplanting the experiment to the United States. My suspicion is that it would not work as well — although the degree to which it would flop would vary from region to region. Residents of different regions country show more politesse than do others. I have found that drivers are far more courteous here in Richmond, for instance, than in Northern Virginia, and I would argue that our roads are marginally less congested as a result.

An example: When I drive downtown during morning rush hour, I go through an intersection where Huguenot Road and River Road join to become Cary Street. Two lanes merge into one, creating a predictable traffic back-up. What makes the situation tolerable is the courtesy that drivers display to one another. It is very rare that you see aggressive drivers muscling ahead of other cars to move ahead one extra slot. There is an unspoken rule that drivers in both lanes alternate entry into the single lane on Cary Street. The effect is like a zipper closing — very smooth, not stressful. That experience is typical of the motorist “culture” in the region.

Contrast that with the Washington area. There I find much more of an every-man-for-himself approach to driving. Displays of courtesy are mistaken for timidity. Hesitation will get you run off the road. I find the much of the motorist behavior to be aggressive, rude, even belligerent. NoVa drivers probably take me for a wimp.

Another example: What happens in your community when a storm knocks out the electric lights? Normal traffic rules regarding rights of way do not apply — people fall back upon their natural instincts. Traffic usually continues unimpeded along one road until a break, then it continues unimpeded on the intersecting road. But with some frequency, treating the intersection like a four-way stop sign, drivers will stop to allow others take their turning moving through the intersection. As a rule, I’ve found, common sense and courtesy prevails.

I have no hard evidence for my proposition, but I would hypothesize that the Richmond way works better than the NoVa way. Aggressive, eradic driving is more likely to disrupt traffic flow than calm, courteous driving. Could Richmonders live up to Drachten standards? Probably not. Aside from the expense of retrofitting our major intersections with roundabouts, there are just too many Yankee transplants down here. (That’s a deliberate attempt to get a rise out of readers.) We may be courteous, but we’re not courteous enough. Additionally, our urban design and land use patterns do not lend themselves to bicycling and walking. Still, the experiment is worth thinking about.

Peter Baque with the Richmond Times-Dispatch, who attended the Virginia Light Rail Symposium Friday, provides a quick environmental scan of light rail projects across Virginia. Everybody loves light rail, it appears — they just don’t like paying for it.

There’s a reason we don’t see a lot of light rail projects:. They’re expensive. They require a lot of money up-front to build, and then they require subsidies to continue operating. As the number of transit projects increases, operating subsidies crowd out funds to build new ones. Thus, in a $150 million budget for the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation for public transit systems, $105 million is tagged for operating expenses and only $39 million for capital projects.

If a transportation mode requires massive investment up front as well as ongoing operating subsidies, that should be a clue that it is not economically viable — not with Virginia’s low-density human settlement patterns at any rate. The only strategy that I can think of that would change the economics is (a) to permit greater densities along transportation corridors, which would boost ridership, and (b) use Community Development Authorities along the corridors to issue bonds to pay the up-front costs. Landowners, whose property would gain in value from the improvements, would pay off the bonds through a special tax assessment.

If there is a public benefit to mass transit — primarily less pollution — then a modest public investment could be justified. But there needs to be a methodology for calculating the pollution-reduction benefits, and the subsidies should be proportional.

There has been considerable discussion on this blog on the viability of the $4 billion estimate for building the Rail to Dulles project. The issue became all the more urgent, to my mind, when private-sector proposals to build a new U.S. 460 between Suffolk and Petersburg came in hundreds of millions of dollars higher than anticipated. Given rampant inflation in the construction sector, could a similar fate be in store for Rail to Dulles, a lynchpin of Kaine administration plans to save Northern Virginia from traffic congestion hell?

We’ll find out more late this winter or early spring when the Bechtel/WGI consortium delivers its final, definitive estimate for Phase One before entering into contract negotiations to build the project. Don’t be surprised if the estimate, which stood at $1.8 billion in 2005 and now officially stands at $2.1 billion, bumps up another notch — a notch that conceivably could amount to another $200 million.

And that’s just Phase One. How much will Phase Two cost a decade or so out? Such an estimate, which must factor in the geopolitical impact of China’s economic transformation on steel prices and of jihadism on Middle Eastern oil supplies, is unknowable.

Peter Galuszka discusses the imponderables in his latest Road to Ruin piece, “A Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma.” He raises several points that, in my humble opinion, are insufficiently appreciated in the Rail to Dulles debate:

1. What happens if inflation pushes up the price of Phase One much beyond $2.1 billion? Where does the money come from? Even now, the state funding formula is about $125 million short. If inflation adds another $250 million to the price tag, the state then needs to find $375 million. That’s real money. Where does it come from?
2. What will the Federal Transit Authority reaction be to a higher price tag? The current funding formula for Phase One anticipates receiving $900 million from the feds. Without it, the project is dead. But the FTA cost-benefit analysis apparently considers the project so marginal that adding $200 million to tunnel underneath Tysons Corner rather than run the rail line above-ground could have scuttled the funding. What if inflation adds $200 million to the cost of the project?
3. Who will absorb the risk if things go wrong? Bechtel-WGI can agree to build the project at almost any price you name — if someone else absorbs the risk of cost overruns. If the Kaine administration is desperate to close a deal for political reasons — and I’m not singling out the Kaine adminstration, what I’m saying applies to any administration — they can bury the risks in the fine print and pray that nothing comes back to bite them.

It strikes me that there’s a very good chance that the Rail to Dulles project could disintegrate. Let us hope that the Kaine administration is considering alternatives for improving mobility in the Rail-to-Dulles corridor. If the option is to build Rail-to-Dulles at any cost or… nothing at all… Virginians may wish they had another choice.

Here’s one possibility: Use time-of-day congestion pricing on the Dulles Toll Road to maximize throughput and use surplus funds to fund Bus Rapid Transit. It would help to have the numbers in hand in the event that Rail to Dulles falls apart.

Here’s a cost that doesn’t get cranked into the usual calculations of traffic congestion: First responders are increasingly using helicopters to get patients to the hospital quickly. Reports Ari Cetron with The Connection Newspapers:

The number of helicopter trips made by Aircare Medevac has more than doubled in just one year. In 2005, the company’s four helicopters in Northern Virginia (based in Manassas, Leesburg, Fredericksburg and Winchester) made 606 trips to Inova Fairfax Hospital. So far in 2006, the same four helicopters have made 1,250 trips.

City officials in Virginia Beach, where scattered, disconnected development has long epitomized everything wrong with suburban sprawl, shows signs that they really get it. On Monday, reports the Virginian-Pilot, the city Planning Commission will hear a proposal for more mixed-use, higher-density housing along Virginia Beach Boulevard.

A voluntary program would allow developers to build “workforce” housing for less affluent families in exchange for density bonuses. Planners anticipate more development like the successful, mixed-use, high density development at Town Center. (See “Extreme Makeover” for a description of the development there.)

After a contentious debate, Hanover County has approved a mixed-use (MX) district that will permit buildings to contain multiple uses. Such structures are normally found only in intensely developed urban areas, which struck a number of Hanover County citizens the wrong way. Many want to preserve the county’s low-density ambience.

The MX district will be limited to “surburban services areas” that allow nodes of greater density. The article in the Herald-Progress does not describe what types of multiple uses are expected. The most likely scenario for Hanover, I’m surmising, is an apartments-over-shops arrangement — and who could argue with that? If people want to live where they work, let them! It’s one more way to take cars off the roads. That’s a goal everyone in Hanover could get behind.

Sen. Walter Stosch, R-Henrico, one of the grandees of the state Senate, explained his thinking about transportation issues at a monthly meeting of the Goochland Republican committee. As reported by S.E. Warwick with The Goochland Courier, he noted quite correctly that the gas tax can’t keep up with the cost of maintaining state roads.

Maintenance costs are increasing by about 10 to 12 percent annually because each year many miles of new subdivision roads are added to the state system. Maintenance involves things like asphalt, derived from oil and concrete, whose prices are rising well ahead of inflation, said the senator.

Polls have shown that the public doesn’t favor any of the funding options proposed by lawmakers this year: raising the sales tax on cars and trucks, raising the wholesale fuel tax, or diverting funds from the General Assembly. “Those are about the only three options,” said Stosch. “That means that the general public is not prepared for any type of solution in a framework we can work with.”

Those are the only three options? Egads, does the good Senator live on the same planet as the rest of us? Unless S.E. Warwick omitted parts of his speech, Stosch did not talk about congestion pricing. He did not talk about privatization or tolls. He did not talk about proffers, impact fees or Community Development Authority bonds. And that’s just on the revenue side. He didn’t talk either about managing the demand for road improvements through land use reforms, car pooling, vans or Bus Rapid Transit — although he did mention high-speed rail and noted, correctly, its high up-front cost.

Tellingly, Stosch never even mentioned the House of Delegates legislative package that would have, among other things, curtailed the admittance of subdivision roads into the state system — one of the reasons he cites for rising maintenance costs!

There is an wide array of thinking about transportation that Sen. Stosch apparently has never tapped into. Sadly, his tunnel vision seems shared by many, though fortunately not all, of his peers in the Senate.

Gov. Tim Kaine and House Speaker Bill Howell are tussling again over the budget, this time over Kaine’s decision to use $3.7 million in surplus state funds to bail out a Fairfax County day care program. As Washington Post reporter Bill Turque explains the background:

For the past several years, Virginia has used state and federal money to subsidize day care for about 6,000 children of single, working parents who had made it off the welfare rolls. When Congress tightened work requirements this year for those still on welfare, the state decided to use its money to help them find child care.

But the actions still left funding uncertain for day care for about 1,900 children. Kaine asked the General Assembly in the spring to use some of the state’s budget surplus to make up the losses. The GOP-led House of Delegates rejected the request.

Kaine justifies the expenditure by calling the situation an “emergency.”

But Howell offers a different version of the story. In a prepared statement yesterday he said: “Despite advance warnings on the sustainability of the federal pass-through funding … the Kaine Administration [did not bring] this issue to the attention of the General Assembly during the regular session.”

Did the House reject a Kaine request for funds, as Turque writes, or did Kaine never raise the issue, as Howell contends? Until presented information to the contrary — and there may be a perfectly valid explanation for the seeming conflict — I’m inclined to believe the Speaker over the reporter.

But there’s a larger issue at stake. Howell brushes up against it when he asks, if Kaine thinks Virginia’s transportation system is so under-funded, why is he using surplus revenues to help out a Fairfax County day care program — something that Virginia’s wealthiest county could easily handle itself? Why isn’t Kaine using the money instead for transportation?

It’s a valid question, but there’s an obvious answer. To Kaine’s way of thinking, everything is underfunded. There isn’t enough money for education, health care and a host of other non-transportation priorities. Heck, Kaine wants to expand statewide pre-school programs at a cost of $300 million a year. That’s why he doesn’t want to divert money from the General Fund to transportation projects.

Here’s how I reverse-engineer the Governor’s legislative strategy coming into the fall: The Governor concluded that he can make a stronger case for raising taxes if the revenues were applied to a clearly dysfunctional transportation system than if they were dedicated to a new social program. That’s why the $1 billion in taxes-for-transportation gambit came first. Once Kaine secured those funds, he would undercut the rationale for using General Fund revenues to fund transportation projects, as Howell wants to do. Then the General Fund would have significant revenues to redeploy in 2009-2010 biennial budget because it wouldn’t include massive one-time investments for transportation, mental health or Chesapeake Bay clean-up like the 2007-2008 budget does. Thus, the pre-school program would be a relatively easy sell — it could be paid for with existing revenue streams. No General Fund tax hikes required.

Unable to get his transportation tax increase this year, and apparently unwilling to try again until 2008, the Governor will have to re-think his options for finding $300 million for his pre-school program. This $3.7 million dust-up over Fairfax County day care looks like the opening move — a reconnoitre of the political battlefield — of Kaine’s next big initiative.

I am distressed to read that Chad Dotson, one of the bloggers who inspired me to launch the Bacon’s Rebellion blog, will stop making daily posts on Commonwealth Conservative. The demands of his job and obligations to his family make it impossible to keep up the pace. Chad says he will continue participating in the blogosphere mainly through posts other blogs.

Chad’s move to blogging semi-retirement underlines a fundamental weakness of the blogosphere. Over two years, Chad had built CC into what is probably the most heavily trafficked conservative blog with a Virginia focus. His latest metrics indicate daily readership of 1,850 per day — and it was probably higher before the election. All the more remarkable is that he accomplished this with only a couple hours of work every evening.

The work-to-reader ratio is remarkable. Think about it: A small weekly newspaper with a circulation of, say, 18,500, or 10 times CC, would employ 10 full-time editorial employees, not to mention sales staff, administrative staff, printing/production employees and people to deliver the newspaper. Ten times the readers but 30 times the number of employees and 100 times the number of man-hours worked.

Here’s the rub: CC, like other state-level blogs, was a labor of love. As successful as he was, Chad did not develop a sustainable business model that would have allowed him to engage someone else to keep the blog going. With competing real-world priorities like advancing his career and spending time with his family, passion could take him only so far.

The end result will be the dissipation of what could have been a valuable franchise. What a shame. Other conservative voices will arise to replace Chad — OK, no one could ever replace Chad, but others will arise to take his place. Maybe they’ll build a franchise over time, but they’ll face the same tension between passion and obligation. Until we can develop an economic underpinning for blogs, we may be destined to see even the best blogs wink in and out of existence like fireflies. Such a blogosphere may act as a corrective to the excesses of the Mainstream Media, but it is not likely to ever surpass the MSM as a source of authoritative information.

Update: Bart Hinkle ruminates on the role of blogs in light of the Gannett media chain’s announcement that it would begin incorporating reader-generated “citizen journalism” into the news gathering process.

I came into this world as a Republican, and I still veer to the red side of international issues: Although I believe there is much to appreciate about and learn from other societies, I’m an unabashed American-firster. But when it comes to domestic issues and building prosperous communities in a globally competitive, knowledge-intensive economy, I don’t see that the Republicans have any more clue than the Democrats of what to do.

Indeed, in the aftermatch of the 2006 elections, I find myself questioning how useful the Republican/Democratic labels are when it comes to confronting the challenges of state/local governance. I’m sure I come across as “Mr. Republican” to many readers of this blog because of my steadfast opposition to higher taxes — taxes that have emanated primarily, though not exclusively, from the Democratic Party and have been opposed by elements of the Republican Party. I remain convinced that raising taxes is the first recourse of those too intellectually lazy to find more creative ways to address public needs.

But I find much to admire in the “reinventing government” focus of former Gov. Mark Warner and, to the extent that he embraces it, Gov. Tim Kaine. In other words, I like my government small — but what it does, I want it to do well.

Likewise, I share the views of many in the environmentalist/ conservationist lobby, most of whom are Democrats, that Virginia’s transportation system is broken, that our land use policies are dysfunctional, and that our human settlement patterns are not sustainable. We are depleting our natural capital, and we are perpetuating energy-intensive forms of development even as we enter an increasingly energy-constrained global economy. (Indeed, with the way things are heading in the Middle East, I believe that we need to protect ourselves from the risk of oil cut-offs that will make the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 look like a picnic.)

The ability of Virginians to adapt to new realities are constrained (a) by our tribal loyalties as members of the Donkey Clan or the Elephant Clan (as Ed Risse calls them), (b) our mental frameworks for understanding the world that we inherited from the past, and (c) the defense of the status quo on the part of those special interests who benefit from Business As Usual.

Richard Florida, the author of the “Rise of the Creative Class,” argues that there is a fundamental realignment going on in American society. The emergence of the Knowledge Economy, and the rise of a “creative class” comprised of individuals who own their means of production, i.e., their own brains, creates an entirely new constituency in American politics. While the elephants wage the culture wars, while the donkeys still sound the class warfare rhetoric of a century ago and the Civil Rights movement of a generation ago, the most critical issues for our future go undiscussed in the political arena: How do we increase the creativity, productivity and capacity for innovation of our workforce, our businesses and our communities?

At some point, Florida speculates, a new political party may emerge to articulate these concerns. We need to be asking ourselves: What old institutions much change? What new institutions must we invent? How do we make our communities more liveable?

I have endeavored to use Bacon’s Rebellion as a forum for re-thinking the way we approach transportation and land use. But we also need to fundamentally re-think how we educate our children, indeed, how we continue re-educating ourselves as adults. We need to fundamentally re-think how we deliver health care services. We need to fundamentally re-think our energy and environmental policies. We need to fundamentally re-think the very meaning of economic development, and how we Virginians will compete in a global economy in which 1.3 billion Chinese and 1.0 billion Indians, and assorted other nationalities hungry for progress and uncorrupted by an entitlement mentality, are educating themselves by the millions and doing high value-added jobs we once considered our exclusive preserve.

No one running for office as a member of the Donkey Clan or the Elephant Clan addressed these issues. The Senatorial race in Virginia was an absolute travesty. The attack ads were a disgrace. The level of discourse was sub-literate. If there’s any lesson to be learned, it’s how bankrupt the two-party system has become. As we survey the wreckage, perhaps it’s time for members of the Creative Class to articulate a new set of principles and priorities.

Little Poquoson on The Peninsula is the first or second most Republican voting city of 134 cities and counties in the Commonwealth. In recent elections Poquoson keeps one of the top three highest per cent voter turn outs.

Our voter turn out was 62.44% (5270 voting out of 8440). Well above the State average.

We had a local race for city council and treasurer. That boosted turnout.

George Allen got 69.07% of the vote. He should have gotten 72 to 75% – at least. That means George didn’t get at least 154 to 293 votes that were his in the super safe Conservative city.

Rep. Jo Ann Davis got 78.80% of the vote. Jo Ann ran 481 votes ahead of George.

Marriage may have had a higher turn out 72.71% of the voters (6137 voting out of 8440). There is a discrepancy between the State Board of Elections (64.14% Yes of 5184 votes) and Daily Press (69.70% Yes of 6137 votes) numbers.

Using DP numbers, Yes for Marriage got 69.70% of the vote which is very close to Allen’s per cent. But, Yes ran 638 votes ahead of Allen and No ran 290 votes ahead of Webb.

Conversely, using SBE numbers Marriage ran behind Allen but No votes didn’t help Webb.

I conclude the Marriage Amendment didn’t boost Allen’s numbers in Poquoson.

So, what cost him?

I wrote in my blog, Deo Vindice, in September ( Friendly Note to George Allen/Thelma Drake: Elected Republicans Cost You Votes) about label fatigue for Republicans at the Federal level and in the Virginia General Assembly.

I have anecdotal evidence on where we lost from 150 to 480 votes in our Super ‘C’ city. Older retired military officers and younger defense engineers gave me an earful on why Rumsfeld should have been fired and, thus, Bush had screwed up prosecution of the War in Iraq.

Reliable Republicans, former dues paying partisans, told me that they were sick of the Repubicans at the Federal level doing nothing (and spending way too much) except two good SCOTUS appointments – and those were to be determined for their real future strength, a tax cut not made permanent, the lesser of two evils on the WW IV against Islamist Terrorism but making mistakes in Iraq…and Virginia Republicans in the General Assembly who raise our taxes and keep trying to cram Regional Governments down our throats.

A usually Republican voter, retired Air Force Officer and Vietnam Marine enlisted Vet, from my church told me last Sunday that Allen lost his vote when he brought up Webb’s writing. This guy said it was over reach, a sign of desperation, and just too much mud. Perhaps, the paid, professional analysts can show me that the loss of his one vote was offset by gaining other votes I don’t know about. My evidence is anecdotal purely. My experience tells me that each contact I have living in grassroots politics is indicative of more votes.

Before the election I didn’t know that these reasons and others actually would take the 3 to 6 % and corresponding 150-481 votes from Allen. Apparently, Larry Sabato did when he called Virginia for Webb.

The Conservative votes lost to Allen and gained by Jo Ann Davis show that in our microcosm there isn’t an ideological shift. We haven’t morphed Liberal.

Every election is about candidate, issues and campaign. Need all three to be right to win.

I haven’t kept up with this story as I promised, but it looks like Greenvest LC’s push for greater development densities in the Dulles South area of Loudoun County is heading for defeat. According to Dusty Smith with Leesburg2day:

The board of supervisors last night signaled the defeat of a proposal to increase the residential densities in Loudoun’s Transition Policy Area near Rt. 50, even after offers came to reduce the number of new homes permitted from more than 33,000 to fewer than 8,000.

What comes next, I don’t know. The virtue of the Greenvest project was that it made an honest effort to create a growth-that-pays-for-itself business model, in which the developer would have used the Community Development Authority mechanism to make massive up-front contributions to local schools, roads and other infrastructure. Foes raised legitimate concerns that Greenvest wasn’t taking all costs into account, and made a strong argument that growth could be more efficiently accommodated in other parts of the county.

Now the county has new issues to deal with: If Greenvest and neighboring developers cannot build an additional 33,000 homes in Dulles South, as they proposed, where will those 33,000 houses go — and what kind of monetary contribution will Loudoun County get from the developers of those homes?

Will growth leapfrog to Clark, Warren, Frederick and Fauquier counties, forcing people to commute longer distances and congesting even more miles of Interstates and arterials? Or will developers focus on Leesburg, Ashburn and Sterling, overloading Route 7 and other local roads? If so, will they match the financial contributions that Greenvest was willing to make?

My high-altitude perspective from down here in Richmond is that channeling development into the Route 7 growth corridor makes the most sense — if the development is done right. It needs to be compact, it needs to permit a finely grained mix of uses, and it needs to allow spots of urban-level density. Developers and planners also need to integrate shared-vehicle systems such as buses and vans into the design. If Loudoun just gets more of what is already there, it will be a disaster.

Perhaps readers from Loudoun can illuminate where the inevitable growth will occur and what that growth will look like.

Update: It’s official. The Board of Supervisors has spiked the rezoning. The Washington Post has the morning-after report here.

As of 8:15 a.m. today, it looks like Jim Webb will be the next U.S. Senator from Virginia, assuming that he holds his razor-thin lead after a recount. When Virginia elects Democrats to the Senate, it elects conservative Democrats — at least they’re conservative by the standards of the national Democratic Party. Somehow, I’m not expecting Webb to rack up a really high score from the Americans for Democratic Action.

While electing a populist Democrat who likes guns and excoriated liberal elites before he started taking money from them, Virginia voters also passed a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage with 57 percent of the vote.

Although voters approved $51 million in road improvements in Loudoun County and another $370 million for roads in Prince William, voters in Stafford County rejected a proposed $238 million bond issue that would have funded local roads and park/recreation facilities. Northern Virginia voters approved a slew of other bond issues, mostly for schools. (See the round-ups in the Washington Post and the Free Lance-Star.)

If there’s a seismic shift in underlying political sentiments here, I don’t see it. George Allen fell victim to an increasingly unpopular war and a string of verbal gaffes. At the same time, cultural conservatives won the big culture-war issue of the day, same sex marriage, by a wide margin. And voters in fast-growing Stafford County voted against bankrolling a major road-building program. Stafford residents may dislike traffic congestion, but it appears that they dislike the prospect of spending public money to fix it even more.

From my obsessed perspective as a transportation policy wonk, I find the Stafford vote the most interesting. If Gov. Timothy M. Kaine thinks that voters will rise up in 2007 and throw out legislators who thwarted his plan to raise taxes, he needs to re-think his logic. They certainly aren’t going to evict House Speaker William J. Howell, who happens to represent Stafford County!

In Loudoun and Prince William, voters did approve a number of transportation projects — but they were specific projects that voters could appraise the need for. Voters were not approving a $1 billion a year in taxes for state lobbyists and politicians to divvy up.

It was just a matter of time before someone made this connection: The rising incidence of obesity in the United States doesn’t just lead to diabetes, high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol, it also increases fuel consumption in passenger vehicles, according to a study by Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Americans have gained an average of 24 pounds since 1960. That weight gain has resulted in an extra 938 million gallons of fuel consumed annually, according to the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation. That’s nearly three times the total amount of fuel consumed by all passenger vehicles each day based on current driving habits.

An interesting experiment in the sensitivity of motorists to increases in toll charges is taking place in the Dulles Greenway. For the first three quarters of 2006, traffic is down 6.6 percent, despite soaring population growth in Loudoun County, in the aftermath of a $.30 toll increase. “The 2006 traffic drop is likely a real indicator of elasticity as the average toll has increased by 30 percent between December of 2004 and September of 2006, well above an inflationary increase,” reports Fitch, the bond-rating service, in giving the Greenway a BBB rating.

October results suggest, however, that demand may be on the upswing again. Meanwhile, toll revenue for the first three quarters of 2006 is up 20.8 percent over the same period in 2005. Revenue has been maximized by the toll increase, application of the peak toll to all hours of weekday traffic, and also aggressive enforcement action, including a $25 administrative fee.

According to Fitch, the TRIP II partnership that owns the toll road has submitted a rate increase application to the State Corporation that would jack up the maximum toll from the current cap of $3.00 to $4.00 by 2012. The application also requests the ability to use variable pricing that would raise the peak hour toll in 2012 to $4.80.

The Macquarie Infrastructure Group, of Australia, is the managing partner of TRIP II, and has agreements to acquire 100 percent ownership by 2020. Details can be found in the Fitch press release.