Tolls Up on Dulles Gway

The Dulles Greenway (Gway) is hiking its tolls another quarter April 17. Its cash tolls will now be $2.00 for a car traveling the full 23km (14mi) weekdays from the end of the Dulles Toll Road (where it picks up 35c remitted to the DTR, a VDOT pike) to Leesburg VA. That $2.00 is something of a watershed toll. The Gway opened in August 1995 with a $2.00 toll. And bombed! Traffic was barely 10k veh/day as opposed to the famous Vollmer projection of a first year with over 30k veh/day at $2. By the end of the year they had dropped the toll to $1 and in a few more months motorists responded well and there were well over 20k tolls/day. They’ve hiked the toll rate steadily back up and by now traffic is over 40k/day.

Only complication is there are discounts. The ET rate is now $1.75/trip, and cash and electronic tolls are both $1.50 at weekends. And they have a cash-back plan for frquent users that has paid back $125k this year. The effective discount for ET use is probably 25%. Patrons have responded. Overall 69% of tolls are ET with rushhour use 78%. (Weekend tolls are $1.50 reardless of payment mode.)