Glad Loudoun's In, Now Fix the Crucial Financing Problem

RCA Reston 2020 is pleased that the Loudoun County Board "opted in" on the Silver Line.  Reston 2020 made a point of not interfering in their study of the issues before their vote; we are unfamiliar with all the issues involved in Loudoun and, of course, it is their county.  Unlike the Fairfax Board of Supervisors--which rushed headlong into the project after pro forma public meetings and a hearing--the Loudoun Board did examine the issues surrounding the line's construction and its implications for the county and its residents.   

Kudos for the Loudoun Board of Supervisors; rotten tomatoes for its Fairfax counterpart.

From a Reston perspective, the Loudoun decision to opt in on the Silver Line helps assure the relatively speedy completion of the Silver Line to Dulles International Airport--the historic goal of the line.  With relatively continuous construction on the line to Dulles in the next few years largely assured by the Loudoun vote, it means that Reston will be the line's terminus--and major traffic congestion point--for only a few years rather than an uncertain, but no doubt lengthy, period had the Loudoun Board decided to "opt out."

Still, the Loudoun Board vote does nothing to solve the crucial and possibly disruptive problem of forcing Dulles Toll Road users to pay over half the $6 billion cost of construction--and a total of some $17 billion in forecast finance and operations charges over the next four decades.  In fact, Loudoun users of the Dulles Toll Road will also face substantial toll increases along the Greenway that connects with the toll road--a minimum of 2.8% annual increase in tolls under the current agreement with the state--for the indefinite future.  Under the current tolling schemes for the connected toll roads, drivers in Leesburg, VA, would face more than a $30 one-way toll to reach the I-495 beltway near Tysons in 2050 or more than $13 one-way in 2012 dollars at a 2.5% inflation rate.   Are even Loudoun's wealthy residents ready to pay $26 per day in today's dollars to commute to places not served by Metrorail?

It is imperative that those responsible for creating the Silver Line—the US Department of Transportation, Virginia, Loudoun and Fairfax counties, and MWAA--find substantial major additional financing for the Metrorail to relieve the burden on toll road users and its broader transportation and economic effects.  Much as it’s appreciated, the $150 million now available from the state is a mere 2.5% of the line’s construction—and well less than one percent of its projected financing cost over the next four decades.   

Worse, the manner in which Virginia is spending state taxpayer money—dribbling it out over three years to help cover interest costs and ease the pain of a tripling in tolls by 2018—is the least cost-effective manner of using the funds.  These scarce state transportation funds should be invested directly in construction costs, thereby lowering toll road user tolls needed to cover construction financing costs over four decades by about five percent or $500-600 million—a three- to four-fold increase in cost-effectiveness.   

Regrettably, we expect that Virginia and MWAA will do the thing with the best political optics--stair-step toll increases--rather than the most cost-effective thing--making a down payment on the Silver Line.  It will be a truly bi-partisan act of wasteful spending. 

If major investments are not made by the other parties, Route 267--the Dulles Greenway and Dulles Toll Road--will truly become "the highway of the one percent," local roads become even more congested with traffic diverted from these tollways (more than 100,000 vehicles per day by our estimate based on CDM Smith's analysis), and economic growth will be limited by the choices of companies and families to move somewhere else where transportation costs are more economical.