May 4, 2012

The Honorable Ray LaHood Secretary of Transportation US Department of Transportation 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE Washington, DC 20590

Dear Mr. Secretary, As members of the Board of the Reston Citizens Association and its community planning committee, Reston 2020, we have followed your efforts to make the Metrorail Silver Line succeed with great interest. Your efforts and those of FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff last year were helpful in shifting some of the official project costs to local governments. And your effort this week is to end MWAAs intransigent stance on PLAs and encourage Loudouns continued participation is appreciated. Yet these efforts barely touch on the most critical issue of the construction of Phase 2 of the Silver Line: Three-quarters of the cost of Phase 2 of the rail lines construction will be borne by the 100,000 or so users of the Dulles Toll Road (DTR), many of them Reston residents. The result will be that toll road users will end up paying more than half of the nearly six billion dollar total cost of the Silver Line. These percentages change little by eliminating MWAAs PLA provision and garnering recently proposed levels of Virginia aid even without the PLA provision. It has not helped that FHWA recently rejected MWAAs TIFIA application and no other new federal aid to the project has been forthcoming. According to MWAAs traffic and revenue forecaster, CDM Smith, toll road users will be forced to pay $17 billion or more by 2050, predominantly to cover MWAAs revenue bond financing costs at near junk level interest rates and operating expenses. Others have said these costs will be much higher because of substantial cost omissions in MWAAs calculations, including capital re-investment. To achieve the current official revenue requirement, CDM Smith forecasts that the current full one-way toll of $2.25 will need to double next year, triple by 2018, and continue spiraling upward to $18.75 in 2048. The unintended consequences of proceeding with this financial arrangement for Restonians and residents of other communities along the Dulles Corridor are potentially devastating. As reflected in the attached presentation: Even allowing for 2.5% inflation over the next four decades, the real toll (2012 dollars) leaps to more than $7.00 by 2028 where it remains through mid-century. A regular commuter who now pays less than $1,000 per year in tolls will see that cost rise to more than $8,000 per year in 2048 or more than $3,000 per year by 2028 in todays dollars. Assuming Fairfax income and inflation growth follows the path of the last two decades, nearly half (48%) of any gains in household disposable income for regular toll road users will go to feeding the MWAA toll machine over the next four decades. 1

o Thats money that will NOT go into growing the local economy. o That will likely discourage people from taking jobs or moving to the Dulles Corridor. Available informationstarting with the CDM Smith traffic forecastindicates that the skyrocketing tolls will force 30,000 vehicles per day or more on to local roads beginning as early as next yearbefore counting increased corridor population and jobs. That is added traffic on already congested local roads that have been underfunded by the Virginia legislature for years. Although Reston 2020 can not quantify its impact precisely, we believe that implementation of the current financing plan for Phase 2 will undermine (and possibly reverse) the very economic growth along the Dulles Corridor that Metrorail is meant to stimulate. Even the commercial real estate firm that is advising Loudoun County notes that there is no evidence that new commuter rail lines stimulate overall economic growth; they only shift it to the area around the stations. The issue is all the more serious in light of forthcoming federal spending cuts. In short, the current financing arrangement will cause substantial economic harm to families who must use the Dulles Toll Road, especially for commuting, and will erode the very economic growth that the rail line is supposed to generate. To say that this funding arrangement, agreed to by MWAA, Loudoun, and Fairfax county officials, is unfair, inequitable, and potentially counter-productive is a gross understatement. Moreover, the deal was cut without public meetings or hearings by any of the participantsjust another backroom political deal that outrages citizens. Its re-affirmation by the Fairfax Board of Supervisors last month ignored citizens concerns and demonstrated its failure to look at the broad ramifications of the deal. Only the Loudoun County Board is reaching out seriously for public inputs on the Silver Line as it moves forward diligently in its deliberations. RCA and Reston 2020 have long been advocates of rail to Dulles as a key driver in our beautiful planned communitys growth. We continue to believe that toll road revenues ought to pay for a quarter of the cost of the Silver Line as detailed in the 2004 FEIS, despite the tripling of cost estimates since then. The vital point is that Dulles Toll Road userswith a 75% stake in Phase 2 costsare the most critical stakeholders in the future of the Silver Lines construction, but they continue to be excluded from the table. Unless people who represent toll road users are included, a reasonable, fair, and equitable solution to the Silver Lines funding problem is unlikely. In Fairfax County, I think representatives from the McLean Citizens Association, Reston Citizens Association, and the Herndon Town Council organizations that represent knowledgably those most affected by the forecast toll increasesought to be included in your deliberations. We do not believe we can count on the Fairfax County Board to represent our concerns. We appreciate your taking the time to consider these issues and ideas. From our perspective, the future of equitable and fair cost sharing as well as completion of the Silver Line is in your hands. We wish you every success in moving forward. If you think we can be of assistance, please do not hesitate to ask.

On behalf of the RCA Reston 2020 Committee, Terrill D. Maynard Reston Citizens Association Board of Directors RCA Reston 2020 Committee 2

Attachment: Some Impacts of Forecast Toll Increases: The Dulles Toll Road, Terry Maynard, RCA Reston 2020 Committee cc: Assistant Secretary for Governmental Affairs, US DOT, Dana Gresham (Dana.Gresham@dot.gov) The Honorable Jim Webb, US Senator, Virginia The Honorable Mark Warner, US Senator, Virginia The Honorable Frank Wolf, US Congressman, 10th District, Virginia The Honorable Jim Moran, US Congressman, 8th District, Virginia The Honorable Gerry Connolly, US Congressman, 11th District, Virginia The Honorable Robert McDonnell, Governor, Commonwealth of Virginia The Honorable Sean Connaughton, Secretary of Transportation, Virginia Select Virginia Legislators Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Loudoun County Board of Supervisors Mr. Jack Potter, CEO, MWAA Mr. Andy Rountree, CFO, MWAA Herndon Town Council Mr. Robert Jackson, President, McLean Citizens Association Reston Citizens Association Board of Directors Fairfax County Federation of Citizens Associations Board of Directors bcc: RCA Reston 2020 Committee Local News Media