Funny to see the desperation of all the exurban communities now that their days of free riding on infrastructure are coming to an end.
Wasn't even a legal free (unless they were using the clean vehicle exemption). It's amazing how many former HOV lane violators now have the audacity to complain. If VA had enforced the requirements enough that it wasn't profitable to violate them, perhaps there wouldn't be so much complaining now.
It is amusing to watch everyone carefully avoiding to admit that they were just flouting the rules all along, and relying on non-enforcement. They couch it in other terms, of course.
Or using the clean-fuel exemption, which was closed to new users ca. 2008 (before I bought my Prius, so I was ineligible), and has long been living on borrowed time.
The folks in Loudoun County will at least be able to use Metrorail's Silver Line when it's extended out there, subsidized by the tolls they're paying on the Dulles Toll Road.
BTW, the proposed legislation would slap tolls on the now-toll free Dulles Airport Access Road, with the goal of making that and the Dulles Toll Road toll-free by 2030. I don't like either idea. Dulles airport users have already lost their exemption from rush-hour HOV (now HO/T) restrictions on I-66. Tolling the access road would rub salt in that wound, and further undermine the goal of encouraging travelers to use Dulles rather than the more congested Reagan National.
It would also make the HO/T restrictions bi-directional, applying to outbound as well as inbound traffic in the morning, and inbound as well as outbound traffic in the afternoon. I think that is inevitable, but it would clobber "reverse commuters" to employers in the Tysons area, which might make Fairfax County unhappy.