I want to see all the people who whine about so-called "Lexus Lanes" on the Beltway show up to complain about the Greenway being the "Rolls-Royce Roadway" in view of its significantly higher toll.
Incidentally, that $4.00 toll rate is the off-peak rate. At rush hour it's higher.
Correct and agreed on all points.
And to add insult to injury, westbound patrons exiting the Dulles Greenway at Va. 606 (Old Ox Road, Exit 8, about 2 miles) pay
exactly the same tolls as those driving all the way to U.S. 15/Va. 7 (Leesburg Bypass, Exit 1, about 13 miles). The cost to pass the main Greenway barrier and exit at Va. 606 is about 50¢ per mile (assumes a $4 toll). Going all the way to Exit 1 is about 31¢ per mile.
As a point of comparison with another "expensive" Virginia toll facility, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel charges a one-way toll of $12. That works out to about 60¢ per mile (and the southbound toll plaza on the Northampton County side
is set pretty far back from the entrance to the actual crossing, I am including that in my computation), though there is only one way in and one way out of the CBBT (added bonus: the CBBT is one of the coolest toll crossings on the globe).
Another comparison - the mid-day and weekend toll on the InterCounty Connector is about $3.20 for the entire length of what is open now, just over 16 miles of tolled highway (a little shorter if you enter from I-95 southbound because of the interchange configuration). That works out to a per-mile midday charge of about 20¢. The ICC peak period charge works out to about 25¢ per mile.
Speaking personally, I usually drive the entire length of the Greenway, so it does not bother me, but for those that exit anywhere before Exit 1, the current toll structure is quite unfair. In a perfect world, the owners of the Greenway would transition to distance-based tolling for E-ZPass patrons only (it would buy them a lot of goodwill), but they would have to install E-Z pass readers on gantries on all of the ramps where there are no readers and no toll equipment of any kind now.