Dulles Greenway - competition that has taken traffic highlighted by MacAtlas

Posted on Mon, 2010-08-30 18:36

Macquarie Atlas Roads in their latest six monthly report have some neat illustrations showing the VDOT improvements to competing free routes to the Dulles Greenway that have devastated their traffic. The Greenway's current traffic should be a thorough embarrassment to traffic and revenue forecasters not least the old Vollmer Associates of New York City, nowadays Stantec.

Sure they included all those standard upfront caveats and disclaimers about the forecasts only being as good as the assumptions, but that's not very helpful when one key assumption turns out to be 60 to 65% wrong.

As soon as the road opened it was clear they'd fundamentally messed up their calculations of motorists' value of time (VOT) saved. At the $2 toll they'd recommended the Greenway got barely a third of the forecast traffic, and after five months (March 1996) the operator dropped the toll to a dollar.

Then, sure enough with the tolls about right the traffic came. Toll rates were gradually increased.

But there was never the revenue that had been projected because of Vollmer's gross initial error on VOT.

On tenth anniversary another bunch of forecasters gets it wrong again

In 2005 another set of forecasters messed up all over again - Maunsell. Working for Macquarie that was buying the Greenway they projected continued growth in traffic from the 61k/day then prevailing. With Maunsell's 'help' Macquarie managed to almost totally miss the negative impact of improvements to free routes then under way - see map and panel just released by Mac Atlas.

It might damp the rate of growth of Greenway traffic for a couple of years, they said. But then growth would be back to normal again.

Never did they get anywhere near to foreseeing what actually occurred - five years of declining traffic, such that at 47k/day the Greenway is now down 23% on traffic in 2005.

Macquarie never published their Greenway forecast for 2010 but from the tone of their presentations and the citations of average compound rates of growth in the high single digits it had to be in the range 75k to 80k. They flew enthusiastically into third laning the pike, necessary over 65k or 70k, but wasted with 47k.

They bought the Greenway and made major investments on improvements on the basis of traffic and revenue forecasts that were high by something like 50% to 70%.

SMH gets Greenway in NJ

Australian investors weren't helped in their Greenway due diligences either by the Sydney Morning Herald - supposedly a serious newspaper published in Queensland - managing to locate the Dulles Greenway in New Jersey. The hazards of foreign investment. And sloppy forecasting.

Latest forecast

Now Mac Atlas is saying that the competing free roads - especially the VA7 Leesburg (historic) Pike and Waxpool Road VA625 are reaching capacity and service levels can be expected to deteriorate.

The corridor screenline volume they say is 190k of which the Greenway is presently garnering only 25% (47k/190k).

"The Dulles Greenway is well placed to capture the excess demand," says Mac Atlas (bottom of panel nearby.)

The future

Just as silly as any extrapolation ever upward is any extrapolation down and down. Both are pretty mindless. Five years of declining traffic on the Greenway doesn't mean it will inexorably decline further.

It is probably correct that the competing free roads have had most of the improvements they are likely to get for another couple of decades, so to the extent they slow from overload, the Greenway will again gain an advantage as a time saver, and regain traffic.

But, there are a couple of buts.

But the Greenway will need to modernize their toll system for free flow - both to gain an edge in speed, and second to allow finer tuning of per-mile toll rates. The present point-toll at the mainline plaza at the eastern end is badly located. It makes for very expensive trips just beyond the plaza, so the Greenway loses most of that potential traffic.

The second 'but' is that peripheral commuting roads like the Greenway depend on corridor development. Since 2008 development in the corridor has virtually ceased due to the Freddie/Fannie housing bubble burst.

And today the Washington Post reports that many newly built office buildings in the corridor have been empty for over two years now - 'see through buildings' they are called for the lack of any partition walls. So the resumption of development in Greenway country beyond Dulles Airport may be a while off.

James Madison Highway US15

Driving in the area recently - this is very impressionistic - we were struck by how heavy traffic was on the circumferential US-15 as compared to the radials (Greenway, VA7, Dulles Toll Road). US 15 is the key north-south route by the western edge of the Washington metro area. It comes off I-85 near the Virginia/North Carolina border parallels I-95 through Culpepper, Warrenton, Manassas, then Leesburg.

Map of US-15 at bottom of this page.

The Dulles Greenway ends at US-15 in Leesburg. It follows the west bank of the Potomac north to a 2-lane bridge over the river at Point of Rocks into Maryland, hits I-70 and I-270 here in Frederick, and goes north through Gettysburg to Harrisburg, where it hits the Turnpike (I-76). It is then a key route up the Susquehanna River valley through central Pennsylvania, over I-80 and into New York state.

In most of Maryland and Pennsylvania US-15 is 4 lanes divided, mostly with surface intersections. But in many stretches it is expressway standard with grade separations.

Dishonoring James Madison

But US-15 in Virginia is a total disgrace, just a winding 2-lane rural lane.

Last Saturday morning when we drove it VA/US-15 resembled nothing so much as a giant traffic jam imported from China's G110 Beijing to Outer Mongolia - except the stopped coal trucks were suburban cars and SUVs.

Poor James Madison after whom the "Highway" is named ("Lane" is a better descriptor) is dishonored by the neglect of the road, most egregious in his home state.

Peripheral routes like US-15 - see map below - are where new investment is now most urgent, not the radials like the Greenway.

on Mac Atlas report

http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/4879

on the Greenway

http://www.macquarie.com.au/au/mqa/news.htm?20100830_0

charts nearby appear here

http://www.macquarie.com.au/au/mqa/news/attachments/ASX_Release_2010.08.30_Half_Year_Results_Presentation.pdf

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Dulles Greenway - competition that has taken traffic highlighted by MacAtlas

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