Suck it up... yet again

Just when you think that you can use the toll road to get to the place you want in Northern Virginia, despite the fact that you are paying to go from one parking lot to another, you hear the news that the toll price will be doubled. By 2012, the toll prices will be doubled on Dulles Toll Road. It is said by the officials that the increase in the toll will help fund the Metro rail’s $5 billion expansion in Northern Virginia and also for the 23-mile Silver line connecting East Falls Church Metro station to Dulles International Airport. If metro rail needs to be expanded, why does toll have to go higher and toll road users have to pay for something that they are not or won’t be using? I do not use the Metro rail ever and the few times I use the toll road (I resent using the toll road) I have to pay increased prices, so that I would be contributing towards the Metro project.


Airport Authority took control of the toll roads from the State, since 2005, so that they can assist the Metro project and had decided to increase the toll on main plaza from 75 cents to $1.50 and to increase by 25 cents on other exits. Instead of blindly saying that the toll will be increased to such amounts by 2012, they should have meetings or suffrage every year to decide whether such increase is required. When the toll roads were opened in the mid 80s’, authorities never intended to keep on collecting tolls from its users. They wanted to collect the money to pay for the costs and maintenance. After such a point was reached, they were going to stop collecting tolls. I guess such a point was never arrived at. The toll kept on increasing from 10 cents to 35 cents now on each exits. But if they are doing it to pay for maintenance or expansion of toll roads, it would justify the fact. But to fund for other projects is absurd.


To top this off, some states, especially Maryland is charging $1.50 a month for those E-Z pass transponders on toll road. Delaware and Virginia collect deposits, instead of charging monthly fees, but Delaware will not return the deposit at the end, when the transponders are returned. Then it is not a deposit, is it? I own that EZ pass transponder as well and the few times I have used it to get off from toll road to go to Tysons (thinking of it, the last time I ever used the toll road was in Jan 2008) and it had been a convenience. When the EZ pass was introduced in Virginia, people paid $35 to be on reserve to use the EZ pass along the East coast, so they don’t have to waste their time on the toll booth, trying to get the change out from their pockets. Paying in advance, guarantees the authorities, that one would use the toll road but having to pay a fee to use that transponder in ridiculous.


If toll keeps on increasing, nobody will build or rent office space in and around the Dulles corridor and no one would use the toll to get there either. Dulles toll road is strangled with the traffic and has become a parking lot of a kind. Why pay to be on a parking lot on toll Road, when you could be taking side roads to get to where you want for the same time and traffic? The purpose of the toll road was to get to a place quicker than other routes but if that purpose is not fulfilled, and then it becomes another normal road. Then why pay to be on a normal road? To borrow from Malcolm X, "NOVA, you've been had! You've been took! you've been bamboozled!"