Is the DOT and FTA trying to force Virginia to sell the Dulles Toll Road? Did the FTA work out a deal with private investors ahead of time to reject public financing? BeyondDC picks up on an interesting angle from the Post’s report that private investors are floating an idea to finance the Dulles rail extension by privatizing the Dulles Toll Road (which will require raising tolls). Two Virginia Congressmen, Democrat Jim Moran and Republican Frank Wolf, claim the FTA’s decision is intended to back Virginia into a corner where its only option is privatization; BeyondDC sees this as meaning “the Feds struck a back room deal with private investors.”

I keep bringing up the inequity between road and rail funding, but if it’s true that the FTA is trying to engineer a road sale, we’re reaching the realm of the absurd. The Federal Transit Administration is using transit decisions to push road policy, but while the left hand is doing that, the right hand of the DOT is still allowing new roads to be built, roads that aren’t private.

Or maybe this is a conspiracy theory. But the theories come up because Virginia elected officials are totally baffled by the motivation behind this decision. Virginia did everything the FTA asked, and the FTA even told Congress the project was going forward. Back-room deal or no, there’s plenty of evidence (like Peters’ personal anti-rail bias) that political motives are at work.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.