The Dulles Greenway will be increasing its tolls for all drivers starting Jan. 1, but raising them even higher for those who take the road during rush hour.
The privately owned 14-mile roadway will charge drivers as much as $4 each way between Leesburg and Washington, D.C.
The $3 base toll is increasing 40 cents. But those who drive eastbound from 6:30 a.m. until 9 a.m. or westbound from 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on weekdays will pay a dollar more than they currently do. Tack on another 50 cents for those continuing on the separate Dulles Toll Road.
And drivers can expect more increases in the next three years, with Greenway prices going up again in 2010 and 2012 to as high as $4.80.
“It’s going to mean additional hundreds of dollars out of the pockets of people who commute to D.C.,” said Lon Anderson, a spokesman for drivers advocacy group AAA Mid-Atlantic.
The owners of the road, Toll Road Investors Partnership II, say they are increasing the tolls to help pay for the cost of building and maintaining the road. Spokeswoman Ann Huggins-Lawler said they are boosting tolls even higher during rush-hour traffic for the first time to encourage drivers to travel at less busy times.
On average, nearly 53,000 tolls are paid each day, Huggins-Lawler said, with an estimated 40 percent of them during the peak congestion periods.
Elected officials and drivers advocates had campaigned to stop the toll hikes. Virginia’s State Corporation Commission approved the increases last year, ruling that Virginia law required the increase to deliver the owners a profit.
U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., who fought the increase, told The Examiner the existing prices are already driving cars and trucks to take alternate routes to avoid the tolls, bringing congestion and dangerous trucks to narrow roads.
“It’s had a negative impact on neighborhoods,” Wolf said.
And now with the increased tolls, the congressman said, tolls may cost drivers as much as their car payments. But as more people use E-ZPass transponders that automatically deduct the toll, Wolf said, many people aren’t aware of how much money they spend to drive on the road.
Private roadways generally cost drivers more out-of-pocket than public ones, AAA’s Anderson said, because the companies that own them pay higher interest rates than government borrowers and are trying to make a profit.
Huggins-Lawler declined to comment on how much the road earns but she said they have not paid out profits to their investors in the past two years. The private road’s sole revenue comes from the tolls, Huggins-Lawler said, and its owners paid $2.5 million in property taxes on the roadway in 2008.
