When the ideology (rubber) meets the road...

From "Would Higher Tolls Affect Your Use of the Greenway?," pages of letters in the Loudoun Extra of the Washington Post. For those of us who have read most issues of the Post for the last 20 years, we remember when the Dulles Greenway was proposed, and the big to do of it as a privately built and managed toll road. Well, like with privatized railroads in Britain, the consequences aren't always what people want.

Theoretically, businesses run enterprises efficiently to reduce costs, but also they run businesses to make profits. The other way of looking at transportation is that it is a public good, and could be run collectively more efficiently without the need to profit. Now, this is skewed, because of the overfocus on the automobile as the primary transportation mode, but we are talkiing more generally.

Here is one of the letters, by Dan Celinski of Ashburn:

Before the latest toll increase, I would take the Dulles Greenway every weekday morning from my Ashburn Farm home to my job in Fairfax County. I would seethe at the amount of money I had to shell out just to drive a few miles along this road.

With the last increase, we must fork over $2.70 each way. This is ridiculous, and I, for one, won't pay it! Our state government has let us down by putting us at the mercy of a private company, Toll Road Investors Partnership II. Drivers from all income levels are being asked to pay for the operations (mismanagement or not) of this company. And now we're being told that we must pay $4.80 each way by 2012!

The Greenway should be taken over by virtue of eminent domain and made part of the Dulles Toll Road. The money paid to this company could be amortized over many years and could be partially offset by a more reasonable toll.

Index Keywords: mobility