Someone is finally going to bat for the much-abused users of the Dulles Toll Road. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-10th, took the first step by introducing legislation that would increase Virginia's representation on the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), which oversees the toll road, and make it easier to replace directors serving on the board. But that's a half measure, argues Jamie Radtke, Republican candidate for Jim Webb's U.S. Senate seat.If she were elected, Radtke announced today, she would introduce a bill that would: (1) Abolish MWAA, (2) return the Dulles Toll Road to the Commonwealth of Virginia, and (3) give the commonwealth the option to manage Dulles International airport, Reagan National Airport, the Dulles airport access highway and construction of the Rail-to-Dulles Metrorail project.
The issue is all about accountability, says Radtke. MWAA, created by federal legislation in 1986, is governed by board members from Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. Wolf's legislation would increase Virginians' representation from a minority to a majority. But Radtke contends that Maryland and D.C., shouldn't have any representation over decisions affecting users of the Dulles Toll Road. The lack of accountability to Virginians or their elected representatives, she said in a prepared statement, is "unacceptable and unconstitutional."
In 2005, Gov. Tim Kaine sealed an agreement in which MWAA would take over management of the Rail-to-Dulles project along with the Dulles Toll Road, which would be tapped to help pay for the project. In January 2006, Phase 1 of the metrorail project was projected to cost $1.8 billion. Sixteen months later, the estimated cost had risen to $2.8 billion and it was decided that Dulles Toll Road users would pay the extra $1 billion. Meanwhile, the cost of Phase 2 escalated by more than $1 billion, no thanks to MWAA board decisions to build an expensive underground rail station and to mandate the use of union labor. At present, toll roads are the only available revenue source to cover that overrun.
MWAA consultants have warned that Dulles Toll Road users, who currently pay a top charge of $4 for a round trip, could be paying $40 (that's not a typo) for a round trip by 2040. "This mismanagement has the potential for devastating financial repercussions on Northern Virginia residents and businesses," said Radtke. "Virginians are paying hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs incurred by MWAA, but these decisions are being made by a board where a majority of the members are non-Virginians."
Characterizing the MWAA experiment as a "financial disaster" for Virginians, Radtke blasted Kaine for giving MWAA "unfettered power and control" over the toll road and its revenues without General Assembly or Congressional approval.
Abolishing MWAA might strike some as using a sledge hammer to drive home a nail. Sure, the state should take back control of Rail-to-Dulles and the Dulles Toll Road, but what's wrong with having an independent airports authority? Here's the problem: Once the state has contractually committed to giving MWAA control of the rail project and the toll road, it can't readily back out. The only solution, then, is abolishing MWAA through federal legislation.Think of MWAA as collateral damage.
Radtke's proposal would not require the state to take control of Dulles and Reagan airports, only give it the option to. If the state chooses not to exercise the option, the airports presumably could refashion an independent authority to do what MWAA was doing before it got entangled in the Rail-to-Dulles project.
MWAA has taken on the Rail to Dulles project because no other governmental authority had the balls to do it.
ReplyDeleteNow, in a tribute to revisionist history Jaime Radke wants the state to take it. No thanks! If there is one governmental entity in the world held in general distruct by the people of Northern Virginia it is the state government. I'd rather have Venezuela or Cuba run the project than the crooks from Richmond.
AS for the $40 round-trip in 2040 - spare me. 2040 is 29 years away. Any estimates of anything that far out are self-mocking.
As for Virginia taking over the MWAA - again, spare me. Ms. Radke seems oblivious to the fact that Regan National Airport sits on federal property. The entire GW parkway is federal land. It is patrolled by the US Park police. The two airports in question - Dulles and Reagan are both regional airports. Washington, DC has no airport. Maryland has a good airport on the outskirts of Baltimore (BWI) but no airport in the Washington metropolitan area. Why should DC or Maryland cede all of their control over two airports which have always been intended to serves people from three different jurisdictions.
As for alternatives, Radke has none. In what has become a hallmark of the Tea Party fringe of the Republican Party, she is long on complaints and short on solutions. People in Northern Virginia understand that the region needs radical transformation to thrive into the future. People in Northern Virginia know that the half-wits in Richmond will never accomplish anything for our region. Hell, they can't even force themselves to raise the gas tax to keep up with inflation. Put those fools in charge of more of our future? Are you kidding?
Finally, Radke is making a political blunder. I believe people in Northern Virginia want the Rail to Dulles project. We want to evolve from suburb to city. We want to be a modern metropolitan area - at least in Fairfax and eastern Loudoun Counties. People elsewhere in the state don't care about Rail to Dulles (give or take the anti-unionists on the right wing fringe). Radke may help herself in the hopelessly inbred Republican primary but she hurts herself in the general election. While I would absolutely hate to vote for Tim Kaine I would do so to keep this dimbulb out of elected office.
Groveton, FYI: Radtke is not anti-rail. I have talked to her about this, and she is explicit on that point. She just thinks that the decision on taxing the commuters of the Dulles Toll Road (and "taxing" is exactly what it is when the revenues are being transferred to the rail project) should be made by someone ultimately accountable to the citizens.
ReplyDeleteAnd what do you mean that Radtke has no alternatives? She just presented an alternative. You don't happen to like the alternative, but don't say she doesn't have one.
You have become quite the defender of MWAA. What you seem to be missing is that under MWAA's watch the entire superstructure of the Phase 2 deal is in danger of blowing up. MWAA bonds are already near junk bond status. It won't take much more foolishness for bond buyers to shun them entirely. How do you finance Phase 2 then?
I'll be interested to see what you have to say if and when the deal does disintegrate. No doubt you'll find some way to blame the dolts in Richmond!
I spend a lot of time in Boston. I listened for years to the myriad complaints about "The Big Dig". It was mismanaged. It was horribly over budget. It should have been run differently.
ReplyDeleteFunny thing, though - it has transformed Boston.
Yes, it was over budget. Yes, it was late. Yes, things could have been done better.
But if the complainers and nay-sayers had their way, it never would have happened at all. Sometimes you just have to do things.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
— Theodore Roosevelt
Something tells me Teddy would not like Jaime Radke.
BTW - It was the state of Virginia, in the person of Tim Kaine, who gave the project to the MWAA in the first place. As usual, the dolts in Richmond fall among those "cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat".
ReplyDeleteOnce again, I must reiterate that Radtke is not opposed to the rail project -- just how it's financed. There are plenty of other places to cut costs and raise more money. Shelve the underground station. Scuttle the mandatory PLA. Put tolls on the access road. Delay other MWAA capital projects and put more airport money into the deal. There are no lack of options. MWAA just doesn't want to pursue them.
ReplyDeleteMWAA told Fairfax & Loudoun County officials that it would absorb each county's small share of the extra costs for the underground station, but insisted on DTR drivers picking up the bulk of the costs. Fairfax County said shove it. I don't know what Loudoun did.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Groveton that people in NoVA want the DTR expansion, mainly because they think everyone else will take it so that their commutes will become easy again. As time passes, they will become less enamored with the Silver Line. The bulk of the benefits will flow to residents of the District and Arlington County.
Many people living reasonably close to the Silver Line will take it, but since it is only a spur line, it will not produce the results other lines have done. The Silver Line in Tysons is projected to have a lower transit share than the RB Corridor and Bethesda, much less downtown D.C. Traffic will not get better, but with more development in Tysons and Reston, it will get worse.
Many more of the operating and overhead costs of WMATA will shift to Fairfax County, which, in turn, will create more budget problems for the County. D.C., Maryland and Arlington County will benefit as their share of costs decrease even as the bulk of the Silver Line's benefits go to Arlington and the District, which will get better rail service, just as the Orange and Silver Lines compete for what is left.
The trip through Tysons will discourage many Dulles passengers from taking rail as will the hopefully jammed Silver Line cars.
The Silver Line will not be a white elephant, but it sure will not be the highlight of transportation improvements in NoVA.
TMT
Jim:
ReplyDeleteHere is the key paragraph to me.
"If she were elected, Radtke announced today, she would introduce a bill that would: (1) Abolish MWAA, (2) return the Dulles Toll Road to the Commonwealth of Virginia, and (3) give the commonwealth the option to manage Dulles International airport, Reagan National Airport, the Dulles airport access highway and construction of the Rail-to-Dulles Metrorail project.".
The Commonwealth of Virginia has refused to address the transportation fiasco for 25 years. The knuckleheads can't even manage to keep the gas tax up with inflation. Their approach to transportation has been culpably negligent. Now, Radke wants to give these same boneheads more control over transportation.
Are you kidding me?
That's like giving Jeffrey Dahlmer the keys to the morgue.
Jim,
ReplyDeleteWhy have you chosen to flak for Jamie Radke?
Peter Galuszka
The real problem is NoVA politicians ignored the likely impact of forcing DTR drivers to pay the lion's share of the costs for building Dulles Rail in order to benefit Dulles Transit Partners and the Tysons landowners. But those consequences, huge increases in tolls without delivering any comparable level of benefit to the drivers, are coming to light.
ReplyDeleteBut now that those consequences are being understood by more people, the NoVA elected officials are running scared. The tolls are excessively high and unfair. The tolls are subsidizing massive increases in density at Tysons that will flow to the landowners bottom lines. The tolls will be so high that many drivers will abandon the DTR and crowd other roads, including neighborhood ones. And to top it off, traffic on the DTR will get worse, not better, once rail and development come to Tysons. The situation is ugly and will only get uglier.
Once again, I don't blame Richmond. It is the job of NoVA's elected officials to represent us and to protect our interests. And one more time, they did not.
TMT
Peter, Maybe you haven't noticed but I've been following the Rail-to-Dulles issue pretty closely. When a public figure expresses concerns that are so similar to mine, I perk up and pay attention. Does that make me a "flak"?
ReplyDeleteOr is "flak" a term of opprobium applied to all conservatives, who after all are moved by only the basest, most reptilian of instincts such as greed, fear and ignorance, as opposed to liberals whom, as all fair-minded people know, are animated by a pure, disinterested quest for truth and justice?
Yes, it does, especially when I see such an unusually strident defense. Maybe you could get a job as her top aide. BTW, "reptilian" is an excellent choice of words -- couldn't have done better myself.
ReplyDeletePG
I would like to be charitable and give folks the benefit of the doubt, but...
ReplyDeleteI can think of nothing to add to Groveton’s and TMT’s cogent thoughts.
Talk about wasting money and time to do nothing.
OK, upon further review I do have a question: Is this a joke?
I have not heard of this person and do not know what she is running for but if she wants to get folks talking here is a suggestion:
File legislation to allow the northern part of Virginia to join with the Federal District and Maryland to form the fourth largest metropolitan state in the US. After all she is taling about a Region serving airport that is owned by the Federal Govrnment.
While she is at it she could give Tidewater the option of joining North Carolina. That would leave Richmond as the capital of ROV with its one term governor and one horse ideas of governance.
Sorry to see the waste of bytes.
I will not sign this, I would be ashamed to admit I wasted time giving it any consideration.
Mr. Gooze.
ReplyDeleteGood to see you tuning in on this issue. I was wondering why all the fuss about the toll road from Mr. Bacon. Where there is smoke, there is fire.
As long as you are here, Mr. Gooze, did you see how one of your favorites, the insanely named Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, has inserted itself in the Fairfax Board of Supervisors race? The Wash Post has the story on page one of today’s Metro section: “Housing Policy a likely issue at Fairfax polls.” ‘Non-partisan’ Michael Thompson is dubbed “long time Republican supporter” and is just above the fold.
Good to hear Mr. Bacon is finally distancing himself from those turkeys in Jefferson tweeds.
CJC
My question from here in Loudoun is:
ReplyDeleteIf you want to evolve balanced communities in Loudoun, why worry about the cost to commuters? There will be few of them anyway.
As a Virginia tax payer why would Virginia want to take over an aging toll road with declining demand and rising maintenance costs?
There has to be some nefarious reason beyond crass political opportunism and gamesmanship here.
NERE
Groveton said earlier, "AS for the $40 round-trip in 2040 - spare me. 2040 is 29 years away. Any estimates of anything that far out are self-mocking."
ReplyDeleteHere is link today of a WTOP radio interview with Tom Davis who says the tolls will be $10.75 each way by 2020 as Phase 2 is currently planned. 2020 isn’t far away.
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=351&sid=2451099
That means to get from Reston to the Beltway to their separate job locations, the annual tolls for mom and dad will total $10,750 for 250 workdays. And that does not include weekend trips to the shopping mall.
Imagine having to pay $21.50 in tolls round trip to the mall on a Saturday afternoon!
Phase 2 is Frank Wolf's political waterloo and Radke is right on. Phase 2 should be cancelled in favor of a cost effective Bus Rapid Transit connection with equal service to rail and faster express service to downtown.
Oh I forgot, Frank Wolf's staff says cost effective BRT was ditched in favor of astronomically expensive heavy rail because white guys won't ride the bus.
And then Frank Wolf uses his taxpayer subsidized mail privileges to send out propaganda about his concern over huge deficits and how China is buying the debt, while bragging about getting Metro to Dulles to help families with their commute.
The tolls per mile from Reston to the Beltway will vastly exceed the current Greenway tolls Frank Wolf likes to rail against.
Do I smell a RINO in the House?
The only good thing about this foolish idea is that the fringe Neanderthals will go hunting the Rino’s with sticks and stones and that those two clans will kill each other off, leaving the forest to the rational apes.
ReplyDeleteYou mean the irrational apes who want to build rail lines that require perpetual subsidies instead of toll roads that pay for themselves and generate an annual profit.
ReplyDeleteNo we said ‘rational’ apes. Those are the ones who can balance land use generated travel demand with mobility and access systems that are sustainable.
ReplyDeleteSaying it doesn't make it so is one of the first lessons a child learns.
ReplyDeleteSelf-financing toll roads are sustainable. Heavy rail systems that have to be taxpayer subsidized forever are not sustainable no matter how many times you say it.
The Space Shuttle was supposed to save money because it was reusable. Originally it was going to cost $7 million per flight, it ended up costing $1 billion per flight.
Metro to Dulles is no different. It is a pork hole you can drive a RINO and a RISSE through.
Anonymous, I agree with you that Dulles Toll Road is financially self supporting, in contrast to Rail-to-Dulles, which, as currently envisioned, will be a money-draining white elephant. But I'd like to make two points regarding your comment:
ReplyDeleteFirst, Ed Risse has been a fierce critic of Rail-to-Dulles on the grounds (a) that the above-ground stations are being poorly integrated with the surrounding land use and (b) that the requisite balance of jobs, housing and amenities does not exist in each of the station service areas. So, it's not fair to tar him with the Rail-to-Dulles brush.
Second, mass transit does not necessarily have to be subsidized by taxpayers forever... if we did things right. On the revenue side, Arlington County has shown how mass transit can generate high ridership. On the cost side, I would refer you to a paper just published by the Heritage Foundation that shows how mass transit could save huge sums of money through competitive contracting (thus bypassing the costs of union featherbedding, work rules, pensions,etc.)
If we could get the land use and station design right, if we could run mass transit companies efficiently, and if we could capture for public benefit some of the increase in property values made possible by the existence of Metro stations, I do believe that we could make mass transit an economically viable proposition. What's discouraging is that, except in rare instances, we are making little progress on any of those fronts. The history of mass transit operated as government -owned, monopolistic enterprises offers little reason for optimism.
Thank you Jim, a very good summary.
ReplyDeleteNow if Ms. Radtke would put in a bill that codifies your summary she would have something going for herself.
By the way what is she running for? I do not recall seeing anything about her.
EMR