On Tuesday, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors will decide whether to proceed with funding Phase II of the controversial Dulles Rail project. Board members will make this choice without the benefit of an independent, updated economic feasibility analysis. This is not the first time they have acted so irresponsibly.
In 2007, board members, led by then-Chairman Gerry Connolly, failed to perform due diligence or even hold a public hearing before committing county taxpayers as “full funding partners” in the overall project, whose final price tag is projected to be $5.7 billion to $6.5 billion. Current Chairwoman Sharon Bulova has continued Connolly’s indefensible legacy of voting first and then asking questions later.
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Volunteer members of the Reston Citizens Association have done a tremendous public service by doing the supervisors’ job for them. An April 2 analysis by RCA’s Reston 2020 committee, using the same data provided by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority’s own consultant, CDM Smith, estimates that the number of drivers who will flee rising tolls on the Dulles Toll Road will dwarf the number of new rail riders when Phase I opens next year.
For every new Metrorail rider, three vehicles will divert from the toll road to already congested Fairfax County roads to escape punishing $4.50 one-way tolls. By 2030, when the one-way tolls needed to pay for Phase II escalate to $10.75, an additional 30,000 drivers are expected to ditch the toll road. “When a public transit project drives increased congestion on local roads and requires the huge subsidies envisioned here, something is very wrong with the transportation planning,” the report concluded.
Co-author Terry Maynard, a retired federal economist, calls Phase II “a bed of financial broken glass [that] toll road users will have to sleep in for decades.” In a series of graphs available on RCA’s website, Maynard demonstrates dramatic shifts in MWAA’s traffic and revenue forecasts between 2005 and 2012. “It borders on fraud,” Peter Samuel, editor of Toll Road News, told The Washington Examiner, adding that “the same analysts produced completely contradictory forecasts for the same road that are even more optimistic at the very time that most other road projects are being less optimistic.”
Although RCA has long supported the completion of the Dulles Rail project, it opposes the current financing arrangement, which over time forces toll road drivers (less than 10 percent of Fairfax County’s population) to pay what amounts to $70,000 per driver over the course of four decades. Considering its many drawbacks, the supervisors should stop and think before they approve such a scheme.
