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. 

AAA: Dulles Tolls Are “Reverse Robin Hood Syndrome”, Fairfax Times, July 23, 2012

By James Hood

Northern Virginia motorists are being “nickled and dimed to death at the toll booth,” Mid-Atlantic AAA charged today, calling the $6 billion construction of Metro’s Silver Line and the tolls that are financing it, a “silver bullet” aimed at the heart of motorists and consumers.

Noting that another round of toll fee hikes is in the offing for users of the Dulles Toll Road, according to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), which operates the toll road, John B. Townsend II, AAA Mid-Atlantic Manager of Public and Government Affairs, said the MWAA has shown itself to have a “tin ear” to the complaints of commuters. . .

. . . “Now the motoring public will feel the full brunt of the toll rates on their wallets and household budgets,” Townsend said. “By capturing the hard-earned money of motorists at the toll booth, the MWAA is financing the construction of the 23-mile, 11 station extension of Metrorail from East Falls Church to Washington Dulles International Airport west into Loudoun County.”

“That’s the reverse Robin Hood syndrome, and it is sickening to motorists.  That’s robbing from the poor to give to the rich,” Townsend charged.

We have put it a different way, but it delivers the same message:  The Dulles Toll Road will become the "Highway of the One Percent."  Only they will be able to afford the $18.75 full one-way tolls--more than $30 one-way for Loudoun commuters from Leesburg and beyond--by 2047.

Click here to read the full text of this excellent article.