Matthew Russotto wrote:
>
> Oh, yes, I remember the Dulles Toll Road fiasco. Massive traffic
> jams, plagues of locusts, dogs and cats living together...

Dulles corridor is interesting. The Dulles Access Road is an FAA road.
FAA is in the same Department of Transportation as FHWA. The similarity
stops there. The FAA also owns and operates the access road to Reagan
National. Or at least it did last time I looked. The FAA may also own
some other roads. Funding for the airport and the road was partly
covered by a passenger tax. Collection of this tax had various names.
Seat surcharge, parking surcharge, car rental add on ...

When Dulles was being planned, Virginia was invited to participate in
funding the access road. The rules of operation did not favor
development along the road. Virginia declined to participate. FAA
responded by allowing entrance to go TO the airport from points outside
the Beltway. But there were no entrances to get on the access road to
go anywhere except the airport. As development proceeded, commuters
would go away from the Beltway to Dulles and then backtrack to go to
DC. Ahh, what ingenuity.

Since it is an FAA road, FAA set the rules and for a while ticketed
reverse commutes just to get on the access road. Commuters bought
airline tickets, or at least got ticket stubs in order to continue FREE
use of the access road. Ahh, what ingenuity. Or was it just another
name for toll?

The FAA understands on time arrival. Well sort of. If the passenger
misses the flight, he may cancel payment on the ticket. The airlines
might not make money.

So the FAA roads which access airports are operated at free flow. NOT
capacity, free flow. Trip times are predictable and repeatable.

Eventually, Virginia saw the need for roads to access the housing which
had sprung up in the corridor. What to do, what to do? Build a parallel
road of course. One that could collect a toll and operate at capacity.
In the interim car pools of various occpancy levels were allowed as
well as transit buses. People did not believe that anyone should be
allowed to tell them how to use a road. At one point in the
construction of the parallel roads, a Congressional Committee of
Hammerschmidt, Rostenkowski, Mineta, and two others established the
rules of operation. Want to get on the road? Go to Congress.

Parking space that was used to aggregate passengers to form car, van
and bus pools was preempted for something else. Ride sharing was
treated as un American.

I think the present situation is that airports in northern Virginia are
operated by an airport commission. That commission sets the operation
of the access roads. That commission has a taxing power of sorts to
charge passengers on the airplanes some kind of ticket surcharge, or
the parking lot operations has part of the revenue dedicated to free
flow roads. That commission is supposedly a Virginia Commission, with
no Congressional ties.

Then there was development at Tysons. Why Tysons when there was already
a METRO at Dunn Loring?

Then there was threatened encroachment to the south until Fairfax
County obtained the property and made it into a police high speed chase
training faciltiy. Digression, are high speed police chases nothing but
trivial pursuit?

Following the cash flow to finance the access roads would take an Enron
Accountant. Following the funding for the toll roads would take the
accountants that caught Al Capone. [:=)]

At one public meeting, Frank Wolf, the Congressman representing the
area answered a question about ridesharing with a comment that a ferry
boat was being studied to carry people on the Potomac. He reported that
the ferry boat looked very promising as a way to relieve commuter
congestion. He never did commit to supporting ride sharing.

Now the Powers of Darkness are going to reward the people that live
there with some type of Dulles rail line. The rest of us will be
rewarded with the honor of paying for part of that rail line.