Posts about Tolls

Of course, cars aren't held to the same standard.

There also aren't many drivers on the ICC. Around 21,000 cars per day use the road. The state says that meets projections, but the projections seem to change. At one point they were as high as 71,000.

But is anyone proposing the state shut the road? Nope. Instead, the strategy is to try and boost car use.

Lawmakers hoped to induce more traffic with lower tolls last year, although that proposal was never accepted. This year the state raised the speed limit to make driving more attractive.

When it comes to bikes and transit, it's cut and run at the first hint of a problem. For cars, it's roll out the red carpet and hope for more traffic.

This isn't the first time this has happened. When Virginia's I-95 HOT lanes were first proposed, the firm hoping to expand the highway called its proposal "BRT/HOT lanes," but of course nothing resembling actual BRT was ever built.

Transportation advocates should remember this the next time someone proposes a "multimodal" highway. Odds are they won't deliver.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

Moreover, attempts such as Fairfax's struck-down 1959 large-lot ordinance often act as blunt tools. Though a region may be interested in controlling sprawling growth emanating from a megacity at its center, such large-lot development policies might have the effect of making housing expensive and car-dependent for the towns on the periphery that are not currently in the direct orbit of the megacity.

It was with this in mind that I recently found the privately owned Dulles "Greenway" toll highway a fascinating case in growth control. Its toll structure works like this: traveling westbound (away from Washington), users pay a toll solely upon entry; traveling eastbound, users pay a toll solely upon exit. At the Greenway's easternmost terminus (near Dulles Airport at the start of the similarly named but state-owned Dulles Toll Road), the toll is nearly $5, while the first few exits at the western end are free before slowly going up in price as one travels eastbound.

The result is that this road is effectively linearly priced for travelers starting their journey in Leesburg (at the western terminus) but fixed-price for travelers starting their journey near Dulles. This makes using the Greenway an expensive proposition for any driver in this latter group not utilizing the entire length of the facility.

Suddenly, a Tysons commuter who chooses a home off of Old Ox Road or the Loudoun County Parkway doesn't suffer just a subtly more expensive commute than one who opts for a similar house in Herndon, a mere 3 miles away: it results in upwards of $2,000 a year in added commuting expenses. On the other hand, residents of the Leesburg area who commute only within their town's region without driving as far as Dulles don't bear the brunt of the eastern end of the road's more expensive toll.

My research has left me without an answer as to whether the tolling structure was designed with this purpose in mind (and because it's a private road that has more ability to self-set its rates, I doubt it), but if it was, I'm impressed.

As policymakers over the next decades increasingly embrace road tolling, such a system might just be the best way to curb sprawl without needlessly angering communities that can be reasonably independent of a central metropolis.

Petitte even gets it wrong, saying that the charge is for non-recyclable bags, while in fact it's for all bags. That means even if this bill had been far, far less impactful, she would still have been whining.

It certainly appears that area editors handed out assignments to "write about how bad new fees are." What else would explain this lede from Michael Laris' article in the Washington Post on the same topic:

Speeding drivers, tow truck operators and fast-food fans who prefer not to be confronted with calorie counts are among those who might be frustrated by new laws in Maryland in the New Year.

The law in Maryland mandates disclosure of information to consumers. It took quite a contortion for Laris to fit that into his list as something that could be bad for Marylanders. Next, will we see a story with a lede like, "Parents who prefer not to know about the lead content in toys their children put in their mouths might be frustrated by a new product safety initiative from the Obama administration"?

Most of these whiny articles don't bother to delve into the reasons behind the laws. They could have interviewed supporters and opponents of each to try to explain the arguments for and against, but that would just get in the way of phoning in the article and getting on with the holiday break.

The most content-free piece was the City Paper's "Confessions of a Wi-Fi Loafer" column, in which Christine MacDonald writes a whole post about how one Petworth listserv poster said charging for Saturday parking "completely sucks." I know it's the holidays and nobody wants to actually work, but the City Paper is still a newspaper. Are they thinking that some blogs involve people posting their quick reactions to items without any serious thought, and therefore they ought to get in on that?

They might also end up complaining about traffic jams. According to the report by MdTA's consultant for toll rates, maximizing revenue on I-270, as they are on the ICC, depends on "operational failure"—traffic jams. In short, despite officials' pronouncements that this project will relieve congestion, most likely the road will end up with jammed free lanes and free-flowing yet expensive HOT lanes which local politicians will again denounce as inequitable "Lexus lanes" or "highway robbery."

With the ICC, opponents repeatedly warned residents and leaders that this "sticker shock" was likely. Their claims fell on deaf ears, but now are turning out to be spot on. How many members of the Montgomery Council will suddenly discover problems with the I-270 HOT lanes once it's too late? Their best hope is that it will take so long to build the road that they won't be around any more.

Frequent candidate Robin Ficker has joined in the ICC toll whining. He wants Maryland to divert some of its statewide sales tax and upcoming slot gambling revenue to make the ICC free. Michael Dresser notes that the sales tax pays for other services that benefit more Maryland residents, like education, and Montgomery isn't welcoming any slots within its boundaries.

But if Ficker is so eager to use sales tax and slots money for transportation, why not advocate using some of the money to make Metro and the Baltimore transit systems free? Or, better yet, use it to improve MARC? Why do leaders, including anti-tax crusaders like Ficker, want public money to keep driving free but don't bat an eyelash at the rising costs of transit?