Our private-public partnerships in NoVA have not been successful

The Dulles Greenway charges outrageous fares, and plans to increase tolls further, presumably because of poor project management.

There are two HOT lane projects in NoVA by Fluor and Transurban, who I believe are foreign based corporations.

The proposal for Fluor and Transurban to take over successful HOV lanes in the I-95/395 corridor is simply a disaster, and sets a poor precedent for encouraging carpooling and mass transit.  The main "contribution" is adding additional lanes near Quantico, which will encourage people to get out of buses and trains, and into cars. Improvements will be minor north of Quantico, and endanger drivers by shrinking median and shoulder areas.  Plus, they have not figured out how to deal with the bottlenecks at the end of the lines, particularly the already congested 14th Street Bridge.

The beltway project might work out, but they are destroying (sometimes needlessly) acres of forest to add four lanes (two in each direction) from the Potomac River to I-95.  One thing they have not worked out is where all of this excess capacity is going to go -- they are not expanding the American Legion bridge over the Potomac, so this will present a huge bottleneck.

In return for all of these "improvements", NoVA will be on the hook to these foreign owned corporations for decades, will experience worsened air quality, and likely worsened traffic in some locations.  We will also encourage exurban (beyond suburban) sprawl in areas over an hour from Washington, DC. Pretty much a lose-lose proposition for Virginia and our Country.  I think the only winners are those involved in the construction industry.

McDonnell's plan does not extensively deal with the short term improvements needed to improve air quality and reduce congestion, that is, low-tech solutions such as bus rapid transit and street cars. We need to encourage people to get out of their cars, not into them.  He does propose heavy rail, but that is years from fruition, and is an expensive solution which does not meet the needs for people to get to and from stations.  

In short, his plan is truly Backwards -- more roads, more heavy rail, more oil drilling -- sounds like the middle of last century, doesn't it?

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by: RichardWard @ Thu Aug 27, 2009 at 08:59:42 AM CDT

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And what politican brought us

these new HOT lanes? The HOT lanes certainly slipped quickly in almost under the radar, especially when compared to all the hullaballoo about a tunnel under-not-over at Tysons Corner for the expansion of rail to Dulles. It was amazing how these giveaways to Fluor and Transurban just slipped right past.

I find all of it very displeasing: we taxpayers paid for the original infrastructure and now it is being "privatized" or otherwise turned over to big, mostly foreign, corporations who will milk us for more money in tolls and fees.  This is supposed to be an economical solution to our money problems? More like a hidden tax. Once we have a one-off sale of our infrastructure, what will be left for us to sell in order to avoid raising taxes? What a fall from grace.

We are basically living off our capital, off the savings and treasure of our ancestors, like the storied profligate and lazy offspring of the hard working pioneers. This is crazy; I am referring to the entire political economy theories which have run this country for the last 50 years.

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by: Teddy Goodson @ Thu Aug 27, 2009 at 10:46:06 AM CDT

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Political expedience (or worse?)

Well, I surely did not hear anything of note from my representatives Jim Moran ("Representative", VA-08), Brian Moran (former Delegate, District 48), or Dick Saslaw (Senate, District 35), nor do they seem to be doing much to mitigate the HOT situation, nor the pending BRAC transportation disaster which takes hold in 2011.  I have done enough to expose why such decisions might be occurring, so I'll let others make the connections there.

This is supposed to be an economical solution to our money problems? More like a hidden tax. Once we have a one-off sale of our infrastructure, what will be left for us to sell in order to avoid raising taxes?

Exactly.  That is why McDonnell's plan is a joke.  Opposing gasoline taxes now in favor of issuing bonds, and leaving the expenses for us and our children to deal with a few years off.  Such plans on the national scale "worked" when we could just "merely" borrow from Medicare and Social Security funds, but now we are trillions in debt to China and other nations.  The states and localities have just barely scraped by with federal "stimulus" (i.e., bailout) packages, which shored up budgets using federal funds.  But soon, this largest ongoing "Ponzi" scheme in the history of man will come to a reckoning -- there are simply not enough "suckers" left.  And as you mention, there is no other alternative than taxation at that point.  

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by: RichardWard @ Thu Aug 27, 2009 at 11:55:04 AM CDT

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For clarity

I was not addressing whether we should do public-private partnerships.  I was just addressing aznew's skepticism on whether private parties would be willing to pony up the cash to do these projects.  The answer to that latter point is most likely yes as has been demonstrated here in Virginia and even more so in other states across the country.

Just a note, Fluor is a US engineering company.  It is based in Irving, TX.  Their HQ is down the street from Exxon's HQ.  I say down the street.  But these parks are pretty big.  Transurban is a publicly traded company based in Australian.

As to what each project entails, I wrote  diaries on each project back when RK was around.  I am certainly not a proponent of either.  I don't know whether this will increase sprawl anymore so than it has from just bad land use planning though.  There are already people who live in Fredericksburg and commute into DC.  If anything, this will probably reduce ridership on VRE.  And also, have they figured out how they are going to distinguish HOV-3 vehicles from non-ones that should be paying the toll?

The idea of tolling though certainly has merits in reducing congestion.  It is a more direct fee for the service than the gas tax is.  If people see more directly and on a more frequent basis the full cost of maintaining and expanding this infrastructure, they have added incentive to ride public transportation.  A potential problem though with government operated tolls is that politicians may shy away from raising tolls to reflect the true necessity for fear of angry constituents (see also the gas tax).  Thus, enter the private parties to handle that problem.  

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by: tx2vadem @ Thu Aug 27, 2009 at 11:38:52 AM CDT

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Thanks tx2vadem

That's some good info.

I wasn't so much commenting on Public-Private Partnerships in general, about which I know little, but rather upon the language in the McDonnell plan, which is no plan at all.

The Virginia Democrat

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by: aznew @ Thu Aug 27, 2009 at 11:45:53 AM CDT

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Thanks for the clarification

I agree, good info.  Fluor is an American based (but very multinational) Fortune 500 company.  Transurban, the Australian company, is the one that will be operating the HOT lanes for the rest of my driving lifetime anyway (I think on the order of 40-60 years).  

It is my understanding that carpoolers will use special EZPasses, and the HOV3 will be enforced by visual inspections, and possibly, infrared camera inspections.  As you mention, Transurban will set the tolls as part of "congestion pricing", i.e., the toll needed (e.g., up to $1 per mile) to maintain an speed of 45 miles per hour in the lanes.  It is my understanding that localities may need to compensate Transurban if toll-paying customers drop below a certain level, that is, creating another perverse incentive to reduce car pooling and mass transit.    

I wish I could give you more information on the exact arrangement, but I think that is still being negotiated -- I did not see a detailed document on the VDOT site.  Much of my information is derived from a Q&A at a civic association meeting.  It was stated at that meeting that there was already time to comment on the arrangement, but what exactly was available for commenting purposes?  And again, the subject surely was not being heavily pushed by many of our representatives and localities.  

I do want to thank, however, Delegate David Englin again for jumping into the fray.  

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by: RichardWard @ Thu Aug 27, 2009 at 17:06:02 PM CDT

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