The Dulles Greenway is a 14 mile extension of the Dulles Toll Toad. The Dulles Greenway runs from VA 28 at Dulles Airport to the US 15 Bypass just south of Leesburg, VA. The road carries the VA 267 designation. The Dulles Greenway was built by and is owned by a private corporation by the name of Toll Road Investors Partnership II (TRIP II). It was the first private toll road built in Virginia since 1816.
The Dulles Greenway opened on September 29, 1995. Although it is an excellent way to avoid traffic on VA 28 and VA 7 to Leesburg, it was not an instant hit. People did not want to pay the high tolls that the road had instituted. The initial toll on the Dulles Greenway was $1.75. The $1.75 was in addition to the tolls of about $1.00 from the Beltway to VA 28 on the existing Dulles Toll Road. This made a total toll of about $6.00 total round trip from Leesburg to The Capital Beltway. This was too much for some to pay. The result of the public's dislike of the high tolls was low traffic counts (approximately 10,500 vehicles a day on a prediction of 30,000 vehicles per day) when the Greenway opened. This resulted in revenue short falls for TRIP II, the owners of the Dulles Greenway. I remember hearing on the radio that VDOT and the State of Virginia were requesting scheduled payments for various expenses from the Greenway construction and the Greenway owners could not pay. Agreements were made that allowed the Dulles Greenway to continue operation and defer some of these payments. Another hot topic on the radio around the time that the road opened was whether or not the road would even survive. The argument was that people would not pay the high tolls to travel on the road.
http://www.roadstothefuture.com/roadsnova/267gw.html Thank you for enlightening me though. I had heard of new toll road programs, but had not realized that a couple of the newer ones that had gotten off the groud were actual private enterprises. Hopefully we will see more of them, the privitization of most major expressways, and a reduction in the gas tax and state DOT bureaucracies and traffic congestion. I really don't understand why existing government toll roads are not sold as initial public offerings today.
If the network of privitized highways becomes large enough, they should be given policing powers like railways have and take that burden off the taxpayer as well, so the State Police (really a bad institution to begin with), can be drastically reduced in size.
I'd even like to see traffic laws privatized on the private highways (i.e. the company sets speed limits, time durations for use of the left lane, driving rules for trucks, weight limits, etc. not the nanny-government).
So in other words, you have to go back 10 years to find the Greenway's financial difficulties. Take a look at it TODAY if you want a better picture. It's the main and only substantial highway corridor into and out of northeast Loudoun County, aka the fastest growing county in the United States. Housing developments have sprung up all along it and it's become one of the main commuter routes. I also notice that you truncated the excerpt you posted from that site, probably intentionally, at the precise spot where the article mentioned its successful footing today. Let's continue:
"Today, the Dulles Greenway has become more popular as Loudoun County has experienced its development boom. Traffic on the Greenway has certainly increased substantially since 1995. In the year 2000, on an average weekday the Dulles Greenway handled about 46,000 vehicles and on an average weekend day about 23,000 vehicles. The Greenway has been widened to 3 lanes eastbound for five miles from Exit 6 (VA 772 Ashburn) to the Main Toll Plaza. A project to add an additional westbound lane in the same area began in the Spring of 2001. Furthermore, tolls at the Main Toll Plaza have also come down to an average of $1.50 depending on whether or not you use Smart Tag and whether it is a weekday or weekend."
It should also be noted that your article is not from a professional or reputable transit source - it appears to be little more than an opinion that somebody posted on the internet. A quick search for better credentialed sites indicates that the project's bond rating is now strong, its finances are stable, and its users are skyrocketting.