by James A. Bacon
There is an interesting back story to the General Assembly deliberations over subsidies to the Rail-to-Dulles project (see previous post). Engaging in a form of informational guerilla warfare, a hardy band of skeptics in Northern Virginia has managed to inject a critical new issue into the debate: How much traffic will higher tolls on the Dulles Toll Road divert to other streets and roads?
Here’s the problem: Rates for the Dulles Toll Road are not being set by a determination of what it costs to maintain and upgrade the toll road. Rates are not set by a calculation of what drivers are willing to pay. Rates are driven by how much money it takes to build Phase 2 of the Rail-to-Dulles heavy rail project.
That project is estimated to cost $2.7 billion. Under the current funding agreement, 75% of the sum will be extracted from drivers on the toll road. Unless the General Assembly coughs up new subsidies, tolls for traveling the full length of the toll road will reach $4.50 by 2013 and escalate steadily to $10.75 by 2028.
“That’s going to drive a large portion of toll-road traffic to local roads, and the local roads are already crowded. The congestion will be that much worse, Terry Maynard, a board member of the Reston 2020 Committee and co-author of “The Dulles Corridor Transportation Planning Fail,” said last week.
Metrorail has been touted as a way to relieve overloaded Northern Virginia roads. In an irony of ironies, Maynard and his buddies contend, more drivers will be diverted to local roads than will be added to the Metrorail ridership! If it’s any consolation, the toll road itself will be a lot less crowded.
Think of that. If Maynard & company are right, Virginia will have spent $5-6 billion on a rail project that will make traffic congestion worse than it was before!
Let me repeat that in capital letters so you don’t miss the point: VIRGINIA WILL HAVE SPENT $5-6 BILLION ON A RAIL PROJECT THAT WILL MAKE TRAFFIC CONGESTION WORSE THAN IT WAS BEFORE!
That’s a truly breathtaking level of incompetence.
The Reston 2020 Committee findings are based in part upon numbers provided by a CDM Smith March 2012 forecast and the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA’s) annual progress report on the construction of Phase 1 of the Silver Line. Thirty-five thousand fewer vehicles will use the toll road daily in 2013 if the tolls are doubled as forecast; 46,000 fewer vehicles will use the toll road daily by 2028.
The analysis was reported by both by the Reston patch and the Washington Post.
As Northern Virginians were absorbing the prospect of worse traffic congestion, people drew two different types of conclusions. One group argued that Phase 2 was a boondoggle and that Fairfax and Loudoun counties, both junior funding partners, should scuttle it altogether. The other group argued that the General Assembly should step in, contributing up to $450 million ($150 million already agreed upon, plus $300 million in dispute) to help pay down the interest on the project debt in order to reduce the impact on Dulles Toll Road users.
Either way, the project is a disaster. Either Metro never gets extended to Dulles airport, as was the idea all along, or Virginia’s taxpayers will get dunned for hundreds of millions of dollars for a project that was structured to enrich well-connected property owners in Tysons Corner. But, hey, what else is new? Virginia used General Funds to pay off an unfunded portion of the Rt. 288 boondoggle outside Richmond several years back (which wasn’t even tolled), and Hampton Roads politicians are clamoring for special consideration for the Midtown-Downtown tunnel.
The old firewalls of fiscal constraint have broken down. This is what we get from abandoning user-pays logic for transportation funding. It’s all about politics and perception now. Taxpayers beware. You will be fleeced.
