By Jim Hood
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) today asked the Virginia Attorney General to have his consumer protection office examine the toll structure on the Dulles Greenway, charging that Greenway users are the victims of “highway robbery.”
“I believe you have the ability to give these residents a way to fight what I call ‘highway robbery,’” Wolf wrote in a letter today to Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. “If there were ever a group of consumers in need of protection, it is those who pay the Greenway tolls.”
Wolf, a longtime critic of the TRIP II, the firm that operates the Greenway, and its foreign-based parent company, Macquiare Ltd., believes the original state law allowing a private corporation to own and operate the Greenway is flawed because it fails to protect the consumer. . . .Click here to read the rest of this article.
Congressman Wolf makes an important point. Under the current agreement with Virginia, TRIP II has the right to increase tolls at the GREATER of GDP growth, inflation, or 2.8% through 2020. No discussions have addressed the future beyond that date. At the moment, it is difficult to believe either inflation or the economy will grow at more than 2.8% over the rest of this decade.
Yet tolls on the Dulles Toll Road are forecast to grow at a much greater rate. Tolls are forecast to double next year and triple in 2018 according to the official MWAA forecast. That means tolls will be growing at a 14.7% annual growth rate through 2020. Even if the forecast horizon is extended to 2050, Dulles toll road users face a more than octupling of tolls or an annual increase in tolls averaging more than 5.7% through 2050.
Moreover, TRIP II must seek state approval for its increases, meaning it will need to get state approval for rate changes beyond 2020. MWAA faces absolutely no review of its toll rate changes. There is no federal or state authority overseeing its rate increases at any point under the agreement Virginia made with MWAA to manage the toll road.
If we assume that the Greenway extends its current rate increase terms and the DTR tolls proceed as forecast, drivers from Leesburg and points west will face a toll of $30.89 in 2050, or $12.09 in today's dollars at a 2.5% inflation rate. Route 267--the Greenway and the DTR--will truly become the HIGHWAY OF THE ONE PERCENT.
Here's what that looks like:
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