American Dream

The bid to take over the Dulles Toll Road in a 50 year concession in return for help financing a troubled Metrorail project in the median looks dead on arrival. It doesn't offer enough for a very valuable toll concession, and it foolishly buys into a highly contentious local fight over a proposed rail line which rail promoters want to locate in the median.

"Dead on arrivial" is a bold, perhaps rash, judgment but, to heck, we decided to write it because the situation looks so clearcut.

"A bit over a billion dollars" is hardly a serious bid for a tollroad with 200k trips/day in one of the most affluent and rapidly developing regions of the US. Cintra-Macquarie paid $1.83b for a tollroad doing 50k/day vehicles in the rustbelt-ridden tag end of the Chicago area. Now they probably paid too much for the Skyway, perhaps $600m or $700m too much, but the DTR is a much more substantial toll property. It has to be worth over $2b, maybe $3b.

Second, the proposal gets right into bed with a dubious collection of rail promoters by linking their takeover of the tollroad directly to financing of the rail line which many regard as a federal grant-seeking boondoggle which will saddle the region with a huge continuing liability in subsidies on operating losses. In an area of auto-oriented dispersed development express buses would carry all the expected peak hour transit riders in less than half a lane, according to calculations, and avoid the need for continuing large subsidies.

Dulles Corridor Mobility Consortium (DCMC) as the group which made the bid is called is led by Infrastructure Investment Group of Curtis Coward a northern Virginia financial consultant, with the backing of Autostrade (Italy) and Laing (UK).

"The Consortium is proud and grateful to be able to offer this innovative and cost-effective project in support of Rail to Dulles," says Coward in his cover letter submitting the proposal to VDOT, clearly taking the side of rail promoters on a divisive local issue. This aspect of the proposal probably dooms it right off.

An influential local politician John Herrity, former chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors yesterday came out strongly against the rail-linked bid saying the improvements proposed to the tollroad are "miniscule" and "cosmetic" saying it was "just another way" to get the rail line built. Ken Cuccinelli, state senator representating the 37th district in the DTR's Fairfax County also opposes the rail line and has used the term "boondoggle" to describe it.

Counter proposals are likely which stay out of the rail fight and offer the state a cash sum or an annual share of toll profits in return for the toll concession. Such offers-without-rail-strings would allow the state to make its own decisions as to its spending priorities.

DCMC's proposal was posted on the VDOT website this morning: see http://www.virginiadot.org/projects/pptaDullesCorridor