Dulles Greenway and Eminent Domain

* Beware, a long rant follows.

I doubt I'm alone in thinking that the tolls on the Greenway are exorbitant. I'm at a loss as to why it isn't a graduated toll rate system with rates based on distance traveled. The spillover effect is that Waxpool road is becoming a rush hour disaster, and Ashburn itself gets backed up. I can't imagine that I live 1 mile from exit 6 yet can't (won't) afford to use the road. The county and state spend millions improving RT 28, Waxpool, and RT 7 et al and to be sure this is at least partly so these roads can handle traffic that would otherwise prefer to use the Greenway. And who knows if as tolls increase this will directly impact Loudoun home values -- as it is, the schools have trouble recruiting certain types of personnel because of it, and I'd guess other employers fo too. The rest of the state enjoys free roads with minimal exceptions. So here we are, a county of generally "wealthy" people (in comparative terms) who pay a lot more into the state tax system than many other counties, yet here we are being raped by the "privatized" toll road. I'm fed up. We've been sold out.

So therein lies my argument for considering eminent domain. I realize it is a controversial tool that can be abused. But the tool itself has been recently expanded in a case called Kelo v New London. The threshold requirement that a public "use" or "need" exist is now seemingly very loosely defined. The definition loosely resembles that the use concern the whole community or promote the general interest in its relation to any legitimate objective of the government. It's not even essential that the whole community or even a considerable portion of it directly enjoy/participate in the benefit to constitute a "public use." We'd of course need to lobby the state or county or both as this is something only they could initiate and do. There are no limits on the type of property that can be taken, and all that is required is "just compensation." Ironically, that figure would take into account the "losses" and " financial hardships"that the builders have always blabbered about when seeking to raise tolls.

At any rate, just a thought.

 

I couldn't agree with you more. I work five miles from my house and commute down Waxpool, normally I leave at 5:45 a.m. everday, but today I left my house at 7:30.....OH MY - I couldn't believe Waxpool Road..didn't realize it was this bad...it was backed up all the way to Ashburn Village Blvd. and I just crept along the rest of the way! Got to my office at 8:10 am...to go just FIVE MILES. YIKES....glad I leave early and will continue to do so no matter what after I saw the traffic this a.m. Are that many people now avoiding the Greedway now?

 

My understanding is the greenway was built years ago for the residents to have easier access to Reston/Vienna/DC. It is a private road because someone/company had the foresight it would be needed to help open up Loudoun County, which it has done. In the early days the road was not used by many at all. However, that has definitely changed and along with the change many developments have been able to thrive due to the convenience of the greenway. Broadlands has definitely benefited from the easy access. For homes that are close to the greenway it is a huge selling point. Granted it cost a lot to use the greenway, but that is the whole reason behind it. If you pay the toll you are getting in and out of the county faster. If the toll is reduced or goes away then the road will be nothing but a parking lot which was not the reason it was designed. Personally, I will pay the toll and have paid the toll for the past 5 years. With gas currently as high as it is I can either pay for the gas while sitting in traffic or I can pay the toll. Get home in 15 minutes and spend time with my family versus sitting in traffic to save a couple of bucks.

 

Eminent domain is not needed to buy out the Greenway. A will in Richmond to spend the money is. A portion of the partnership was bought last August:

"Macquarie Infrastructure Group (MIG) today announced it has entered into agreements to invest US$533 million (A$711m) in Dulles Greenway.."

Wow, $533M! Imagine if Richmond was willing to spend that much on a road up here!

I couldn't agree with you more on graduated tolls. This was included in the "permit" that was given by the state before construction and has come up each time the Greenway applies for a toll increase. They give lame excuses that the tolls are graduated (for west bound traffic getting on at the intermediate interchanges and going to Leesburg) and cite feasibility/cost as factors that prevent fully graduated tolls. The Commonwealth buys their argument each time.

Wait until the state sells their portion of the toll road for $1B to help pay for the Metro extension. The tolls will surely spike. I bet that within three years the one-way tollway trip from Broadlands to the beltway is $6. Not so bad you might say, I'll just take the train - yeah when it comes to Loudoun in 2015 (no joke, that's the schedule). That's $8K in additional tolls before Metro even arrives.

I think they should do some Private/Public road partnerships down in Roanoke, Harrisonburg, Charlottesville, etc.

-Jim

 

And don't forget, the State is looking at more of these public-private 'partnerships' to take over building roads.

So .. you either get taxed by the state to build roads, or you'll be taxed by paying tolls on all the roads that they will be building.

Which would you rather be ... myself, I'd rather pay either more sales tax, as the NoVA delegation wanted (and defeated by downstate representatives) than pay tolls everywhere you want to go.

When I was working in Reston, I used the toll road as I felt I'd rather spend my personal time at home, than in the car burning gas in a parking lot.

Now the state is entertaining bids to take over the Dulles Toll Road. Imagine what that will do, which is why I'd rather see the Washington Airports Authority (who own the land under the DTR) take it over. We know the money will be kept in the area for repairs, and for bringing the Metro out this way.

 

Here's 2 ideas.

1. Have the Airport Authority assume control of the greenway. That way they could add the extra toll booths so that it could be a graduated toll system like the primary toll road.

2. Extend Gloucester Pkwy to Nokes Blvd at 28. That would allow the ashburn folks another way to get to 28 and help alleviate the waxpool traffic.

 

I love your #2 idea......

 

Or, punch Smith's Switch Rd through to Rt 28 at Nokes.

It has amazed and baffled me why these types of improvements are not done. I think a lot of it is due to not having county road departments and instead having it all done by an inefficient state bureaucracy. It would be interesting to see VDOT's construction arm benchmarked against other states.

It certainly is not a tax issue. When we moved here from the Chicago area, my total tax bill stayed very close to the same and yet the traffic on my local roads was not nearly as bad as here (now I-88/I-294/I-290/I-94/Rt 53 were a totally different story).

-Jim

 

There are is nothing in the foreseeable future that is going to improve the waxpool situation, it is only going to get worse and worse. There is nothing even being engineered. The amount of homes going to be finished on the south side og the greenway in the next several years is enormous.
Evergreen rd is going to be the next traffic nightmare and don't we all love the improvements made to Evergreen by all those developers building thousands of homes off that road. ha ha
When Loudoun County parkway opens to rt 7 in a few months just wait and see how horrible the intersection of waxpool and LCP will become.

Personally I don't see a thing that is going to improve the traffic in Loudoun ever.



Brambelton Movie theater and town center and many regional shopping centers being built in the area right now are going to bring many non residents from afar to eat and shop here soon. The movie theater alone is going to be an enormous draw from outside the area.

Everyone has an idea how to improve traffic but the reality is it will get a lot worse and Loudoun will go down in the land planning growth books as a place on how not to grow.

I am just happy that I work at home and make my own hours and my two kids are in college. Under those circumstances Loudoun is a great place to live. As long as you shop and go out to eat during the weerkdays.

Heres a link to VDOTS 20 year plan for northern va scroll down to loudouns measly 6 projects identified by vdot for the next 20 years and there is virtually no money to even do these. http://www.sotrans.state.va.us/VTrans/nova.pdf

Anyone that thinks traffic is going to improve in Loudoun or the DC area in their lifetime lives in la la land.

Lee

 

I stopped using the Greedway. I lost 5 minutes in my commute so far. I know it iwll get worse over time but for me it is worth it to stick it to them. Richmond does not take us seriously. We need to send a wake up call. We wan't more of our taxes back here. What we need is an Occoquan Tea Party and a threat of succession.

 

I was using the Greenway/Dulles Toll Road daily driving to work until the last couple of rate increases. I use it now only when I'm running late, and am trying to 'catch up' so I'm not late to work. The only problem is that usually backfires, and I end up later than I would have been had I taken Waxpool to 28. So to me, the cost isn't worth my aggravation when it becomes as backed up or worse than getting out of Ashburn.

 

It is very obvious that the county, for whatever reason, has not wanted there to be any other way to get to the junction of 28 and the toll road except via waxpool. all the possible routes, either via the AOL area or south of it, are conveniently blocked, dead ended etc. its a conspiracy.

 

Lee, I just love how pessimistic you are. So productive in your thought process.

About Gloucester Parkway- it'll never get built to Route 28 without a LOT of help from the landowners- i.e., developers. There are TWO HUGE floodplains to cross- one initial estimate was $6 million for only one of the crossings.

However, keep an eye out- with Loudoun County the hot market it is, there are a lot of proposals on the table (or about to be). It could get built before you know it.

And I agree that Gloucester extended to 28 will be the best thing to relieve traffic on Waxpool. In addition, Smith Switch will hit Gloucester just before it gets to Loudoun County Parkway, so you theoretically could go up Smith Switch to Gloucester to 28 (or straight across to Nokes, where the interchange will be, but that's another story).

 

Not a pessimist just a realist!!! I just look to the past to see the future!!!!

I am one of the few that has been around here when 28 was a two lane road and country side was the end of the world. THE ONLY MAJOR ROAD BUILT IN TWENTY YEARS IS THE GREENWAY and that had to be done with private funds.

Waxpool was only finished last year in those twenty years. LCP is still not finished either to 50 or 7. The roads looked better and the development was better planned back then as ashburn village dr and farmwell show.

Lets see what is going to happen next year to improve the roads LCP finished to 7, start of an interchage at lcp and 7 another on 50 and maybe another at belmont ridge, claiborne will make it to 7, sterling interchange finished. the year after the same thing the next year the same thing. So three years from now we know there will be virtually no improvement to the local roads. So lets look at the the 3 years after that nothing really planned to go to engineering for local major road improvment. No discussion about building the rest of the interchanges on 28 in that 6 year period you might see a little of belmont ridge widen and the toll booths widened, but the toll road east of 28 is already at capacity at rush hour so what good will that do. No more improvements to that road except construction of a subway to reston and it will be at least 2015 until we might see it to ashburn the is 10 years from now.

Yes traffic improvements that could make a difference are not even on the drawing boards yet so the next 20 years if the thinking stays the way it is with our politicians all talk and no action well as I see the picture we have just begun to see the nightmare. One must live in the real world to see there is nothing that is going to make any difference to the traffic here except make it much much worse if the last twenty years is any indication of the future. VDOT has hardly anything on their website for improvements for loudoun for the next twenty years.

SHOW ME where these road improvements are going to come from in reality in the form of hard facts not the fantasy people seem to paint for themselves for this area including the politicians.

Yes I would love to see this area crash only for the wakeup call it will give Richmond and local politicians that their cash cow is dying and if they do not take care of it will be dead.
The most amount of growth around here has taken place over the last 5 to10 years. Sales are not coming around even though we are in the beginning of the selling season. As a matter of fact inventory is increasing by the minute. Pulte has as many homes and lots coming on line over the next year off evergreen then this whole area has seen in years. That is just one developer and Hovanian has another mega development around the corner and the zillions of smaller developments popping up everywhere so inventory is going to increase dramtatically this next year. Toll is already advertising a smaller and cheaper product for the area. All these developments are going to add many more cars to the roads and soon we will be seeing the mega condensed developments spurting up over the next year such as Loudoun station and no major road improvements in the works???? I don't think I am a pessimist just a realist for the future of loudoun traffic. A wakeup call in the form of a real estate crash would be be good for this county in the long term. A little tough love for this county is what is needed. Life in Loudoun was better in the nineties then it has been in the new century.


Lee J Buividas

 

I have been working in DC for 13 years now and always used to leave the house between 6:15 and 6:30 AM and never had a problem until the last year or two. Was always a 45 minute trip and could actually be faster than during the weekends because you could go faster with the traffic flow. Now I leave about 5:30 - 5:45 and I am amazed at how many cars are on Waxpool/28/Toll Rd. that time of day. My wife and I both would take the Greenway (she works in MD) and with the new rate increases and gas prices where they are we were spending close to $1,000 per month just to drive to and from work and then park at our offices. We both try to take the Waxpool/28 Route as much as possible and our tolls have dropped from close to $17 per day to about $6 per day. Saving $11 per day might not be worth the hassle of adding 15-30 minutes to our commutes, but it was just getting to frustrating to see that yellow light come on what seemed to be every 8-10 days or so saying we were already at a low balance.

One other option that would help traffic flow is to build a connection between LCP and 606 to provide yet another way to get to 28 and Herndon without going on Waxpool. I know it's just a dream, but it would be nice to have that connection available as well.

 

If you use google maps you can see how the Greedway bisected the county and that a road could be built to connect Ox and LCP. If that happened I would take that every day.

 

Just wait until that Bear National Golf course opens on Waxpool Road and also the retail stores that they're planning around Wegmans! YIKES! More traffic to contend with.....

 

There are two golf courses there was another announced a few weeks ago across waxpool on the aol side. Should be under construction soon. I have always said we need two more connections to 28 between waxpool and 50 one to connect to the new sterling interchange and a shellhorn extension could do that. Another on the south side of the greeenway to connect to to 606 and the new interchange at ox road and 28 would help immensely. The problem is the creek crossing for both and the expense so I don't expect to see them for at least 10 plus years and most likely longer. The section between waxpool and seven has the same problem and at least 10 years for that to happen to connect with nokes.

Contary to what people say there is nothing firm in the works for any of these extensions. The only way they will happen if the high density developments get built and they offer to build the connections before development otherwise they will be done piece meal and could even take longer then 10 years. One must keep the past history of this county in mind when trying to be optimistic about road improvements they happen extremely slow around here if at all. Most are done piece meal as claiborne and pacific and LCP etc.

Just look how long it took to piece all those segments of roads north of seven from Leesburg to the huges center and they are still not totally four lane divided and do not extend past the bio tech center at ashburn village drive.

Lee J Buividas

 

Back when the MCI campus was approved, one of their proffer requirements was to connect Shellhorn Rd with 606, offering another way to get to Rte 28. Since they've gone belly up and sold to Verizon, I wonder if this will ever get done.
DCDavis, any way you can check on this?