Letter: AAA Opposed to MWAA's Toll Plans, Fairfax Patch, September 16, 2012

"It was a rotten formula at the start whose stench only gets worse with each passing year and the skyrocketing tolls that come with it."

With another increasingly expensive round of toll fee hikes in the offing for users of the Dulles Toll Road, according to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), AAA Mid-Atlantic wants to reiterate clearly and loudly its opposition.

We understand that someone has to pay for the $6 billion cost of the construction of the Silver Line, but the overriding question in our mind is just who that should be. At last check, local motorists, via their tolls, are being forced to shoulder nearly 60% of the costs of this project. . . .

. . . We urge MWAA, as it prepares for its latest round of hearings, to slow the escalation of these fees. The costs of a project of this magnitude that will benefit an entire region should not be borne so disproportionately by the drivers on the Dulles Toll Road.

It was a rotten formula at the start whose stench only gets worse with each passing year and the skyrocketing tolls that come with it. As the latest round of toll hikes for a round-trip on the Dulles Toll Road prove, they don’t call it the “Silver Line” for nothing, but we think it’s now more deserving of a new name: “Platinum Line.”

Lon Anderson
AAA Mid-Atlantic Managing Director of Public and Government Affairs.

 Click here for the rest of AAA's letter.