'People Chose To Pay' $44 I-66 Tolls: Rates Stay The Same For Now

Reporting by Ryan Persaud and Yasmine Jumaa, VCU's Capital News Service

VIENNA, VA—A month after tolls went into effect inside the Beltway on Interstate 66 with prices reaching up to $44, the system won't change—at least for now.

The Northern Virginia Transportation Commission recently failed to pass a proposal to lower the toll rates, The Washington Post reported. This gives the Virginia Department of Transportation until late spring to analyze how the system is working. Loudoun County Supervisor Ron Meyer had introduced the unsuccessful proposal reconfigure tolling rates, dropping the minimum speed from 55 mph to 45 mph and putting a cap on tolls.

Solo drivers are charged tolls Monday-Friday 5:30 a.m.-9:30 a.m. for all eastbound lanes and 3 p.m.-7 p.m. for westbound lanes. Anyone carpooling with an E-Z Pass Flex set to HOV-2 does not pay a toll. Toll prices can change every few minutes, with the highest prices happening during the 8 a.m. hour. Drivers can check real-time toll prices here.

Secretary of Transportation Aubrey Layne defended the tolls, saying they are necessary for increasing the flow of traffic on the highway in Northern Virginia. Layne spoke Tuesday to the General Assembly’s Joint Commission on Transportation Accountability. His report came a month after Del. Tim Hugo of Fairfax, who chairs the House Republican Caucus, called the I-66 tolls “exorbitant” and “unacceptable.”

“I would’ve anticipated that happening a lot lower than the $44, but it did not,” Layne said. “People chose to pay it, but it was a choice. Our other option is we could just limit the road when it reaches a certain level [to] HOV users. The issue with that is that we’re taking away that choice for the people who want to pay it.”

Sen. Frank Wagner, R-Virginia Beach, said the high tolls are a result of a lack of state funding for road projects.

“This is all symptomatic of not having enough money to begin with to build the highways,” Wagner said. “We’re having to do these unique types of programs to build these highways.”

Del.-elect Danica Roem, a Democrat from Manassas, told Layne about constituents hit hard by the tolls. They included a combat veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder who must drive by himself as a part of his treatment. The constituent said that avoiding the tolls added 45 minutes to his commute.

Layne insisted that commuters can take alternate routes such as Route 50 and the George Washington Memorial Parkway. But another constituent Roem spoke to said he commutes from Manassas Park to Georgetown and cannot take any alternate pathways. The driver stated that he does not know how to budget his money due to the varying tolls.

“That’s the beast of the dynamic tolling process: You don’t know what it’s going to be each day until the time you get there because it’s basically volume control,” Roem said. “He [the constituent from Manassas Park] had a number of concerns with this.”

Other commuters like Debbie Vickers of Loudoun County think hard about their options. She told WTOP it would cost $18 a day to take a bus from South Riding to DC, a few dollars less to take the bus to the Wiehle-Reston East Metro Station and take the Silver Line into DC, or drive on I-66 earlier to avoid morning tolls and pay around $10 at night.

A WTOP survey indicates many respondents leave earlier or just pay the toll, but the largest portion try alternate roads or VRE. Very few have turned to Metro and commuter buses—options transportation officials want to encourage by implementing tolls.

After monitoring the corridors surrounding I-66 and alternative routes, Layne said that so far the data indicated no significant change in travel time on those routes.

“We need to continue to monitor this, and it may require that we do adjustments, but as of right now we do not see any significant impact to these parallel corridors,” Layne said.

Last month, Hugo released a statement criticizing Layne and Gov. Terry McAuliffe on the toll rates.

“Governor McAuliffe has gone on TV several times this week saying $40 toll prices are the way ‘it’s supposed to work.’ I could not disagree more,” Hugo said. “The hard-working people of Northern Virginia should not be forced to get a part-time job to be able to afford to drive to their full-time job.”

These are Layne’s final days as the commonwealth’s secretary of transportation. Gov.-elect Ralph Northam has appointed former Lynchburg lawmaker Shannon Valentine to the position.

Image via VDOT