Posts about HOT Lanes

Traffic

Corporate welfare and the Beltway HOT lanes, part 3: Don't worry until it's too late

by Steve Kattula   •   November 18, 2009 3:05 pm

Virginia's contract for the Beltway HOT lanes are not just far from free to taxpayers and even worse if people carpool. The structure of the deal ultimately minimizes public outrage until it's too late, saddling taxpayers with a high bill and no voice.

The contract gives Fluor/Transurban a "first right" monopolization on expansion of the Beltway if congestion dictates. This clause not only ensures room for further profit, but if the project renderings are correct, much room at the center of the beltway will be left for HOT lane expansion at the expense of the left shoulder of the regular beltway lanes.

However, the project benefits list ROW for emergency vehicles as an important amenity. With one less shoulder for vehicle break-downs, tow trucks & ambulances will certainly need that access.

But most troubling of all has been the lack of citizen involvement, particularly in response to these covert subsidies. The most apparent reaction to the entire project was against the destruction of trees (required for the widening) and how this would affect the local bird sanctuaries. Everyone should be concerned about wildlife habitats, but it's troubling for local democracy that something so obvious (trees will be cut down along the beltway to widen it) came as a complete surprise to locals. Most Northern Virginians were completely unaware of the VDOT "Megaproject" prior to construction, and this illustrates the problematic nature of complex contracts that promise free stuff.

When taxpayer dollars are (supposedly) not involved, citizens (and even politicians) retract from the process, especially from boring contractual details. "Why should I care, it's not my money?" Whereas the costly Silver Line extension, Mixing Bowl project, and Wilson Bridge brought about citizen involvement in droves, the supposedly free and complex, "black-box" nature of the HOT lanes deal served to discourage input and criticism. Despite VDOT following legally-mandated procedures for public input, the result was an opaque deal-making process, and a bad deal for Virginians.

Traffic

Corporate welfare and the Beltway HOT lanes, part 2: You better not carpool (too much)

by Steve Kattula   •   November 11, 2009 10:46 am

Most press coverage of the Beltway HOT lanes has either touted the lanes or noted the high planned toll rates, up to $1 per mile. Project proponents counter the toll outrage by pointing out that commuters can carpool on the lanes for "free." The correct term, however, should be taxpayer subsidized. The state have to pay Fluor-Transurban for each carpooling vehicle if HOV use exceeds 24% of total vehicles.

From the agreement:

(b) The Department agrees to pay the Concessionaire, subject to Section 20.18, amounts equal to 70% of the Average Toll applicable to vehicles paying tolls for the number of High Occupancy Vehicles exceeding a threshold of 24% of the total flow of all Permitted Vehicles that are then using such Toll Section going in the same direction for the first 30 consecutive minutes during any day, and any additional 15 consecutive minute periods in such day, during which average traffic for a Toll Section going in the same direction exceeds a rate of 3,200 vehicles per hour based on two lanes.

Based on the contract, state taxpayers suffer if our effort to rideshare is too successful. But just how much will we need to share in order to be punished? To use the existing I-395 HOV3 as a gauge, VDOT counted 30,000 cars per day in each direction. Assuming that on an average day most of those carpools drive within a 6 hour window, 395 would have 5,000 HOV3 vehicles per hour.

If we estimate that Tysons HOV3 use will be half as successful as I-395 is now, we could conservatively assume 2,500 HOV3 cars per hour in each direction. During peak times, this could well encompass more than 50% of the cars in the lanes. Fluor could charge taxpayers for half the carpool vehicles at the going rate, adding up to tens of millions of dollars per year.

Traffic

Corporate welfare and the Beltway HOT lanes, part 1: No free lunch

by Steve Kattula   •   November 9, 2009 10:34 am

Beware of Australians bearing gifts, at least if those gifts are massive highway widening projects.

Whether by negligence or malice, the Northern Virginia Beltway HOT Lanes project has become an increasingly expensive boondoggle. Fluor-Transurban, the private company working on the project, originally promised to build HOT lanes construction for "free" to the state, with overhead costs paid for by the company and recouped through congestion-priced tolls. With Northern Virginians desperate for road expansion and the rest of Virginia hoarding Fairfax County's tax dollars, a mere lending of public land in return for the good graces of benevolent corporate efficiency seemed like an unbeatable harnessing of the free market.

Proposed for $1.1 billion as a creative way to use free market demand to expand road capacity at no taxpayer expense, the result has been a $1.9 billion heavily subsidized profit hog, taxing citizens up front, on the back end through penalties, and regressively through user fees. While cost re-estimates should have been alarming, what should have come as even more shocking was the heavy demand for taxpayer money. Virginia provided $409 million in direct grant funding, along with $1.7 $1.17 billion in federally subsidized loans and bonds. The few media stories on the project focused on the relative novelty of how pricey the tolls the new "private" road would be, when the more substantive story was that it had almost ceased to be a privately-funded road at all.

A major argument in favor of a public-private partnership is risk. A private entity assumes the loan and bond repayment risk, and this takes the burden of repayment off the public. But the glossy advertisements on virginiahotlanes.com don't account for the risk involved in dismantling NOVA's transportation spine. The risk is not so much if the private contractor drowns, but that if he drowns he takes us with him.

If the contractor goes broke, the central community artery will be in shambles. This creates the worst of scenarios, in which the state and citizenry assume great mobility risk and ultimately financial risk if the contractor defaults. With the road ripped to bits, taxpayers will be forced to finish the job or be paralyzed. In this sense, the criticism is similar to the argument against student loan giant Sallie Mae, in that Sallie Mae makes loans and the federal government is obligated to pick up defaulted student loans. Just as the private entity in that partnership does not assume adequate risk; neither does the private entity in the case of the Beltway HOT lanes.

Next: The contractual block against carpooling.

Traffic

Do "we have to do something" about traffic but not transit?

by David Alpert   •   October 26, 2009 12:21 pm

Why do many of our leaders in suburban jurisdictions see new roads as necessary and inevitable, but new transit as difficult and unlikely?

I've been meeting with elected officials in the region about transportation and development issues. One representative from Montgomery County recently expressed a general sentiment among area leaders that "we have to do something" to accommodate increased traffic between the American Legion Bridge and I-270. After all, Virginia is building HOT lanes that will bring more cars onto the Beltway, and Maryland is pushing for more lanes on 270 north of Rockville. Logically, this person said, the state and the county will probably have to connect the two with additional HOT lanes through Potomac and Bethesda.

Later in the conversation, when discussing Gaithersburg West, I noted the potential for biotech development at White Oak. That location is already a life sciences hub. It's closer to both DC and Baltimore, reducing the likely commutes for people working there versus Gaithersburg West. It's also in a part of Montgomery County with far fewer jobs than people, unlike the 270 corridor.

What it lacks, like Gaithersburg West, is good transit. There is an inactive proposal to build a Purple Line spur up New Hampshire or Route 29 to the area. Why not revive the idea? When I brought it up, the representative jokingly said something like, "I'd like some of what you're smoking." And in fact, with many transit projects including the Purple Line, Baltimore Red Line, and Corridor Cities Transitway already vying for funds, it would be very difficult to add a Purple Line spur to White Oak.

That's the conventional wisdom among most elected officials. We "have to do something" to add road capacity. But transit projects are so difficult as to be nearly laughable. Yet freeway projects are not cheap. As we saw from ACT's alternative plan for the I-270 corridor, you can build a lot of transit for the price of some freeway lanes. It's just that leaders are too accustomed to viewing road capacity as a necessity and transit as a luxury.