Our take on the private Tolls: Dulles G’way & 91 Lanes implement interoperable PR

The PR spin on the Dulles Greenway and SR-91 Express Lanes is so similar these two outfits seem to be sharing the costs of PR, and employing the same spokesperson! It is the same line from each, all joy and great news. These two investor-built toll roads are both doing just fine, we are told, either on track or better than projected.

Everyone is so haaaaappy.

Even the traffic numbers seem similar on the Tolls at each edge of this broad continent — in the range 14,000 to 18,000 vehicles per day. Also the revenue streams of the G’way and 91-Lanes are apparently about the same, though the actual $#s are deep dark secrets.

Our rough guestimates:

• 91-Lanes: 16,000 minus 5,000 free-riding HOVs= 11,000 payers of an average $1.65= $18K/day=$6.5m/yr

• G’way: 17,000x$1= $17K/day= $6.1m/yr

The last hard traffic figures we were able to get for the 91-Lanes was in early March and the figure was an official count of 14,000 vehicles per day in mid-February and this source said that the next two weeks showed a “plateauing,” which sounded ominous. As we went to press, source number one was unable to tell us any more, because the matter had become more sensitive. But a 91-Lanes representative assures us the traffic numbers have NOT plateaued and have been continuing to rise, and it is on the basis of trust in that official that we guess the current 91-Lanes number to be something like 16,000/day. Both sources said about a third of the vehicles on the 91-Lanes are carpooling (HOV) free-riders.

On the Dulles G’way the situation is that motorists have reacted well to the drop in the toll rate from $1.75 to $1.00 which occurred Friday March 8. Prior to that ridership seemed bogged down in the region 11,000 to 12,000 vehicles per day. An official statement from the G’way said that on the first day of the dollar toll ridership was 14,354, nearly a fifth more. The Saturday saw a 40% rise and the Monday 14,800, up 28%. The decision was then made not to release any more numbers for about a month to stymie Dow Jones style daily speculations with party-pooping reporters seizing on a bad number here and there. We are told however that although there have been large random day to day variations the trend is now steadily upward. If the increase is now 45% then the G’way is currently catering to about 17,000 vehicles per day.

Of course to regain the daily revenue it was garnering with 11,500 riders at a $1.75 toll, at $1.00 it needs just over 20,000 to gross as much in what its PR guys call the present “Dollar Days” as it made during the Seven Quarters Days earlier. And now wished forgotten is a business plan that projected 30,000 to 40,000 vehicles/day with a $2 toll! Another odious comparison is with the 90,000 who daily pay tolls on the Virginia DoT Dulles Toll Road between the Washington Beltway and the airport.

Positives

The G’way has a few hopeful things going for it. (1) A developer is so keen to get direct access off the road that he is negotiating to build one of its unbuilt interchanges. (2) The road now has a 65mph posted speed after it started out with 55mph and some very aggressive police ticketing that upset patrons. (3) Virginia’s economy is, well, OK, much better at least than Maryland and DC, and construction proceeds on either side of the G’way. America On-Line is building its HQ in Loudoun County and a large gas company.

E-tolls? The G’way says it cannot provide e-toll tags to its patrons until the Virginia DoT has e-tolling operating in its adjacent Dulles toll road. The G’way has its tags in use for staff vehicles and police and its raring to go electronic. They hope it will be e-tolling before summer.

As for the 91-Lanes, it reports it now has 33,000 tags out, with demand still strong. Other good news on both projects is that they each seem to have been well accepted by the local communities and they are working smoothly. Neither project seems to have had any serious technical problems and neither have yet experienced an injury accident.

Going in favor of the 91-Lanes is that it has a low staff (no toll attendants) and is a relatively lean $126m investment compared to $325m for the G’way, which also has the expense of attendants. In the G’way’s favor, it is less heavily geared financially (the Bryant-Crane family went in deep) and was always expected to take years to break even.

All they both want is more customers, and they each smile a happy face to try and attract them. (Sources: none mentionable)