rail

Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA) which runs serious transport facilities in the form of four toll bridges also runs a sad joke of a train line called PATCO. Over the weekend DRPA put out a press statement apologizing for serious delays that occurred in two consecutive rush-hours.

2012-07-03: Leesburg's Republican Ken Reid was the most articulate and forceful critic of the Metro Silver Line extending Dulles Rail into Loudoun County where he is one of nine elected supervisors (councilors.) But in a flip today he voted in favor of the rail transit project and provided the key swing vote for a 5 to 4 tally in favor.

Fairfax county has given the OK to Phase 2 of the Dulles Rail project the financing of which is 75% on the toll revenues of the Dulles Toll Road. A county board of 'supervisors' (councillors) meeting this week voted unanimously to confirm the County's participation in the estimated $2.7 billion second half of the project which has generated concern about whether $2 billion of toll revenue bonds are serviceable.

The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority's ventures in surface transportation are entangling it deeper in local controversy. The major county government involved, Fairfax County is now divided over the huge tolls that MWAA says are needed to provide the bulk of the funding for a new $5 billion rail transit line.

The county board this week deferred a vote when speaker after speaker attacked the MWAA funding plan which could see tolls on the 12 mile Dulles Toll Road go from $2.25 to $4.50 next year and $6.75 by 2018.

Wilbur Smith Associates (WSA) record of traffic and revenue forecasting is blasted in a study done by a retired federal government economist Terry Maynard for the Reston Citizens Association (CRA) in northern Virginia. The report supports a call for an independent review of the WSA/CDMSmith traffic and revenue forecast of the Dulles Toll Road.

Former Hawaii Governor Ben Cayetano announced he was coming out of retirement to run for  Honolulu Mayor on a platform of ending the hugely expensive Honolulu rail project. 

Montgomery County is leading toll revenue and engineering studies and public outreach for major rail and road improvements in the US422 corridor northwest of Philadelphia to be funded by collecting all-electronic tolls on the presently untolled highway.

Virginia House speaker William Howell says the Dulles Rail project proposed for the median of the Dulles Toll Road and Dulles Greenway is an "incredible waste of money" and may actually worsen traffic conditions in northern Virginia by encouraging higher density development. Future ownership of the Dulles Toll Road is at stake in the controversy over the $5 billion rail project.

Timothy W Martin secretary of the Illinois Department of Transportation 2003-2007, now a senior VP of CTE/Aecom said at a conference recently that Chicago doesn't need toll express lanes because it has something better - passenger rail lines in expressway medians. They carry far more people than the same space devoted to highway lanes, he claimed.

This is nonsense, but it's commonly held nonsense. An urban myth.