Confirmed: Toll Road Rates Going Up, Sun to Continue Rising in the East

The airports authority has released its schedule for toll increases through 2015, and guess what? They're going up.

Effective January 1, 2013, tolls at the mainline plaza will be $1.75 (up from $1.50) and the ramps will be $1.00 (up from $0.75).

There are two options currently being presented by MWAA for toll prices from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2014. The first would raise the cost at the mainline plaza to $2.50, with no increase on the ramps. The second would raise the mainline plaza to $2.25, and the ramps to $1.25.

There are two similar options for rates from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31 2015. Option A calls for a mainline plaza raise to $2.75 and the ramps raised to $1.75. Option B would raise the mainline plaza to $3.00 and the ramps to $1.50.

Either way, in just a little over two years, we'll be paying $9 for a round-trip excursion to the wonders of Tysons Corner. The Greater Reston Chamber is in support of concentrating the toll increases at the mainline plaza to encourage shorter trips on the Toll Road where "transit is not an option." And the folks at AAA took some time away from printing Trip-Tiks for your family's road trip to Disneyworld to say they're opposed to the rapid toll hikes, adding in a snap unprecedented in auto-wrecker-dispatching-company correspondence:

It was a rotten formula at the start whose stench only gets worse with each passing year and the skyrocketing tolls that come with it. As the latest round of toll hikes for a round-trip on the Dulles Toll Road prove, they don’t call it the “Silver Line” for nothing, but we think it’s now more deserving of a new name: “Platinum Line.”

Our BFFs at Reston 2020 have also weighed in, arguing that the toll hikes will move 10,000 to 15,000 trips to Reston roads, especially after our stocks of extra coinage stuck behind the sofa cushions have been exhausted. They also predict the hikes will "slow the economic and tax revenue growth the construction of the Silver Line is meant to stimulate," arguing that the impact could undermine future county tax revenue from all that projected bollardy growth by 5 to 10 percent.

Where's the funny part, you ask? How about this comment from the public hearings about the toll hikes from a few weeks back, where people got to see this fancy Powerpoint:

The Airports Authority says public feedback will be taken seriously when establishing the new toll rates later this year.

Ha ha, that's a good one! Enjoy the veal and be sure to tip your waitress, folks. And now, tonight's featured act, Bobcat Goldthwait!


Be thankful we did NOT set this video to "autoplay."