Greenway Drivers Face Dilemma

Use of the Greenway has grown with Loudoun. In 1996, about 6.3 million vehicles traveled the highway. Last year, nearly 21 million cars and trucks used it. But TRIP II has operated at a loss since the road opened, despite projections that it would be profitable by 2003. Its debt has nearly tripled, to more than $900 million.

To some officials, creating a privately owned highway is bad policy because it amounts to a non-public tax on an essential service.

"You don't privatize the fire department, do you?" said Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who has opposed Greenway toll increases but, as a federal official, is not empowered to derail them.

"If a mom wants to drop somebody off at a Little League game or a soccer game, it's sort of the road of that area," Wolf said. "Even on a Saturday morning, you're back and forth on that road constantly."

Perhaps the only real choice left, some residents said, is one based on principle, not economics.

Jimmy Gleason, 45, a technology worker at Verizon, said he and his wife, Maryann, a program planner for SAIC, began rising a little earlier each day to avoid the Greenway after the last toll increase, in 2006.

Although it takes longer to use only local roads to drop their 1-year-old at day care and commute to Tysons Corner, they prefer their new routine to paying tolls.

"It's just the principle," Gleason said. "I'd rather spend a little more on gas and drive around."