Toll-Lanes Contract Could Cost State

Financing for the project is also being provided by the federal government. The private companies are putting up $349 million in cash and will be responsible for building and operating the lanes and repaying the federal bonds and loans. The road will be turned over to the state after 80 years.

The project, in the works for nearly a decade, was planned as a way for private companies to add capacity to one of the most congested roads in the country, with little cost or risk to the public.

Now some transportation officials wonder whether the deal will wind up costing taxpayers much more at a time when the state's transportation budget is empty. The state will have to transfer $3 billion from construction projects just to maintain the roads it has over the next six years. With the General Assembly's failure to come up with a funding plan in a special session this month, there is little hope on the horizon.

"If we are going to pay this money ourselves, why not build it ourselves and keep the tolls for ourselves?" said Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.

But others said the state was left with little choice.

"Is this the ideal way to build public infrastructure? No," said Gerald E. Connolly (D), chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. But he said that voters have turned down tax increases and that the General Assembly has failed to come up with additional money.

"At some point, we have to find a way to fund public infrastructure," Connolly said. "We're left with other models, all of which have undesirable side effects."

The goal of the HOT lanes is to use variable pricing to keep the lanes free-flowing. There is no upper limit on rates. Motorists who don't want to pay can drive in the free, non-HOT lanes.

During negotiations, the private companies argued that too many carpoolers in the HOT lanes at peak times would bog down the lanes and cost them revenue needed to repay the financing, because single- and double-occupant drivers would hardly pay a premium of $1 a mile or more to sit in stop-and-go traffic.

Other projects have struggled with how to encourage carpooling while keeping the "express" in express lanes.

In Houston, a HOT lane project set to open this fall limits carpoolers and transit vehicles to 25 percent of traffic. In California, carpoolers were initially allowed on HOT lanes for free but were soon charged half-fare after the lanes clogged. In the Virginia agreement, only state law could change the free-ride status of carpoolers and mass-transit vehicles.

Virginia's deal to subsidize carpools is unique in the fast-growing world of variable-cost toll lanes and public-private partnerships, according to Robert Poole, director of transportation studies for the Reason Foundation and an early proponent of HOT lanes.