Private toll roads

Tim May timcmay at got.net
Fri May 9 19:43:51 PDT 2003


On Friday, May 9, 2003, at 03:00  PM, BobCat wrote:

> From: "Tim May" <timcmay at got.net>
>
>> This private toll road would be very hard to build in any other place,
>
> Not impossible, though:
>
> http://www.dullesgreenway.com/cgi-bin/dginfo.cfm
>
> The Dulles Greenway is a privately owned 14-mile toll road that 
> connects
> Washington Dulles International Airport with Leesburg, Virginia. The
> Greenway is the first private toll road in Virginia since 1816.
> Since the Greenway's dedication on September 29th 1995, commuters have
> enjoyed a non-stop alternative to Routes 7 and 28.
>

If I'm not mistaken--and I haven't done any Googling on this--the new 
toll road is next to the older and still operating road.

(I have not been on the Dulles Access Road since 1991, but I recall the 
private toll road was under construction next to it, on the same right 
of way.)

I spent most of the 60s in the Langley/Fairfax area, and I took 
travelled the Dulles Access Road many times. The original "right of 
way" was of course obtained by condemning hundreds of properties in the 
1950s to make way for the Dulles Access Road. Burbclaves like Reston 
and Herndon later grew up on either side of the condemned right of way, 
and had only limited connections to each other.

If the new toll road is using the original condemned right of way, then 
my point stands. The new developers presumably bribed the right 
officials and contributed to the right election campaigns so as to 
piggyback on the original statist action.

If the new toll road is NOT on the orginal right of way, and passes 
through the various neighborhoods like Herndon, Reston, and Vienna, 
then I would be very interested in just how they bought up thousands of 
houses, cut through dozens of surface streets, and generally cut a new 
swathe through a suburban area.

--Tim May





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