Private Roads Work

I have a few questions:

1. Was the land upon which the Dulles Greenway was built zoned for all uses, or did land use regulations keep it mostly out of productive use anyway, thereby lowering its value and making a road cheaper to build?
2. Are property taxes being paid on the Dulles Greenway?
3. Did the builders receive any sort of government money or bond guarantees?
4. Was eminent domain used in acquiring the land?
5. Did the previous owners of the land sell it to the builders of the highway because they were the highest bidders, or for some other reason?

Hmmmmmmm. Interesting article.

I like the way you think, Stephen.

The extent of my knowledge of the Dulles Greenway is from reading the article today. I’ll send an email to Bart Frazier to see if he can answer your questions better, and invite him to join the discussion.

Nonetheless, I was willing to bet that the Dulles Greenway does not pay property taxes, and benefits from government backed bonds. (The fact that it is named after one of the Dulles, leads me to believe that it benefits from subsidy in one way or many.)

I would have lost that bet! Check out this fact sheet on their very informative website:

Myth – the Dulles Greenway is a Public Private Partnership built under the Virginia Public Private Transportation Act of 1995.

Fact – the Dulles Greenway is one of the first highways of its kind in the United States, and is the first private road in Virginia since 1816. It was built under the Virginia Highway Act of 1988.
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Myth – the Dulles Greenway is exempt from taxes.

Fact – the owner of the Dulles Greenway, Toll Road Investors Partnership II, (TRIP II) pays real estate taxes on the property on which the road is built. In 2007, TRIP II paid $3.1 million in real estate taxes alone.
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Myth – the Commonwealth of Virginia condemned the land that was used to build the Dulles Greenway.

Fact – TRIP II purchased all the land that the Greenway is situated on from the original owners at market price.
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Myth – the Commonwealth of Virginia issued tax free bonds to help finance the Dulles Greenway.

Fact – the Dulles Greenway was built using conventional financing at market rates.

Of course it’s regulated, which leads me to optomistically conclude there’s more upside:

Myth – the Dulles Greenway can charge whatever toll amount necessary

Fact – the owner of the Dulles Greenway, TRIP II must comply with the order of the Virginia State Corporation Commission.

I’m still skeptical, as you probably are too. This subject deserves more investigation.

Thanks for the link to this article, which I’ve only skimmed, and to the other similar ones also (which I haven’t yet had a chance to look at). While I’m inclined to be skeptical, these articles do seem to raise some thought provoking questions.

However, my tentative initial assessment is that this whole line of thought is really only relevant to development in rural or suburban areas — and not to REAL cities or REAL urban areas (and thus to the REAL world of market urbanism). My point here is related to my earlier comment in a previous Market Urbanism thread, “Yes, Virginia . . . ,” that private roads seem to me to be truly feasible only on giant ranches in California or Texas. While the Dulles Greenway isn’t in either of those two states or, apparently, carved out of single giant ranch, it nevertheless seems to be close enough (a toll road through mostly unbuilt up areas).

So the most immediate question that comes to my mind is the following: Are there any REAL modern day, successful CITIES with essentially private roads?

While a quick reading of the article turns up one “city” (North Oaks, Minnesota) as an example of a successful city with private roads, this “city” seems to be a city in name only. In reality it seems to be a suburban subdivision — a small one at that (?) — that happens to have been legally incorporated as a “city.” So it seems to be a “city” only in a very narrow techinical sense of the word.

Here’s some info from the “city’s” website (the numbering and additional emphasis is mine — BH):

Located [1] in the Twin Cities, just northeast of St. Paul, Minnesota, North Oaks is a unique [2] suburban community. With a rich history and emphasis on retaining the natural environment, North Oaks celebrated its [3] 50th anniversary in 2006.

Approximately [4] 4,500 residents call North Oaks home. Because residents’ properties extend to halfway across the road, all RESIDENTIAL ROADS in the City are private and for the use of North Oaks residents and their invited guests only.

Here are two quickly chosen points of reference regarding 4,500 residents:

1) The Penn South urbanal renewal development in the Chelsea section of Manhattan (between 23rd St. and 29th [?] St., between Eighth and Ninth Avenues), which is just one of many middle-income housing developments in New York CITY, has (according to their website) 2,820 apartments. Which means it likely has about 4,500 residents.

2) Info on Levittown, New York from Wikipedia:

Levittown, a suburb of New York City, is a hamlet in the Town of Hempstead located on Long Island in Nassau County, New York. Levittown is mid way between the villages of Hempstead and Farmingdale. As of the 2000 census, the community had a total population of 53,067.

North Oaks seems a curious inclusion as a precedent that we should aspire to. “Market” yes but forget the “urbanism”. Taking ownership of the road to maintain it is one thing…but to actually exclude others violates the American principles that create an open society…a society that values actual commerce with others. I may be “libertarian” but I’m pretty sure that most Americans will find that feudal privatization of the public realm abhorrent. Imagine “no trespassing” signs going up in Savannah’s garden squares. I call that a recipe for quickly losing our cultural capital. We need to find private solutions that build upon the principles of fairness, access and competition…not solutions that create gated mono-cultures.

Demanding this kind of proof is unfair when the government maintains a monopoly on all city incorporation.

mhelie wrote above:

“Demanding this kind of proof is unfair when the government maintains a monopoly on all city incorporation.”

Benjamin writes:

I’m not sure how this comment addresses the issue I raised in my original post, above.

Is a network of private roadways that would substitute for a network of public roadways feasible / desirable in real cities — especially large cities? Maybe they are; maybe they aren’t. But the fact that North Oaks, Minnesota (which is the example that Bart Frazier gives), has private roadways seems irrelevant to this question, since North Oaks, Minnesota, doesn’t seem to be a REAL city — but only a city in name only. (Rather than being a true city, as we commonly think of cities, it seems to be a relatively small suburban subdivision that got itself incorporated as a “city.”)

However, my tentative initial assessment is that this whole line of thought is really only relevant to development in rural or suburban areas — and not to REAL cities or REAL urban areas (and thus to the REAL world of market urbanism). My point here is related to my earlier comment in a previous Market Urbanism thread, “Yes, Virginia . . . ,” that private roads seem to me to be truly feasible only on giant ranches in California or Texas. While the Dulles Greenway isn’t in either of those two states or, apparently, carved out of single giant ranch, it nevertheless seems to be close enough (a toll road through mostly unbuilt up areas).

Great points. I put emphasis on roads, even rural roads, as a critical feature of the Market Urbanism thesis that sprawl is induced through an over-socialized transportation system. Nonetheless, more dense cities are currently less feasible places for private roadways because of the extremely high transaction costs of tolling a very complex network of streets. Relatively straight stretches of highway are easier to toll with current technologies, and thus are better contenders for private operation. I think examples of private roads in urban areas are likely to be limited to driveways, loading docks, short private streets (as found in parts of Brooklyn), and home owner associations. But, I would argue that urban bridges are prime for private ownership…

To Benjamin Herric:

You need to really understand the distinguishable aspects of describing urban and suburban areas, otherwise there would never make sense under any circumstances. In my knowledge, private roadways exist not only in the US but also in other parts of the world.

Please know your viewpoints well, and discuss with others about the merits of various roadways, not just private roadways but also public ones, too. Proceed with caution, Hemric. Other people will say about this.