Dulles Toll Road users may now add the widening of the Loudoun County Parkway to the list of regional transportation projects for which they are being asked to pay out of pocket over the next several years.

As expected, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has proposed increasing the Dulles Toll Road user fee over the next three years to cover over half the cost of the $5.25 billion Metro rail extension to the airport as well as the toll road’s own operating and infrastructure needs. The airports authority has indicated — and several elected officials believe — that this is only the first set of several toll increases that might need to be implemented to pay for Metro rail.

But the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors was a little taken aback to learn that the airports authority also intends to use toll road revenue to fund a third of the $2 million engineering study for the expansion of the Loudoun County Parkway, otherwise known as Route 606. The parkway is mostly located in eastern Loudoun near the Dulles International Airport.

"This improvement is in Loudoun County and I don’t think revenue collected in Fairfax should go across the county line," said Hunter Mill supervisor Cathy Hudgins, who represents much of the area surrounding the Dulles Toll Road.

AT ITS Sept. 14 meeting, the Fairfax board voted to send a strongly worded letter to the airports authority stating their opposition to the use of the toll road revenue for projects outside the Dulles corridor in Fairfax County at the urging of Hudgins.

The supervisors were unaware that toll road revenue had been allocated to the Loudoun County Parkway project until a McLean resident brought it to the attention of Dranesville Supervisor John Foust (D). The resident learned about it during one of the airports authority’s public hearings on the proposed toll road rate hike in early September.

If the airports authority can use Dulles Toll Road revenue for the engineering study, then the organization may also allocate toll revenue for the construction portion of the Route 606 project, said Hudgins in a written statement to her colleagues.

She also said the use of toll road funds for a project that she considers to be outside the boundaries of the Dulles corridor sets a dangerous precedent.

"Given the lack of transportation funding, there would certainly be pressure to use toll road revenue for other regional projects in Northern Virginia," said Hudgins.

THE FAIRFAX SUPERVISORS asked for legal clarification on where the boundaries of the Dulles corridor end according to the toll road management and oversight agreement signed by the airports authority in 2006.

Fairfax officials said the airports authority is only supposed to use toll road funds for projects that would directly benefit the Dulles corridor, which the Fairfax supervisors believed to be limited to the area around the Dulles Toll Road in their own county.

"This is certainly outside of what our definition of the Dulles corridor had been," said Bulova.

But Hudgins acknowledged that, in her opinion, the definition of the Dulles corridor laid out in the legal agreement with the airports authority is broad.

In her written statement, Hudgins said the Dulles corridor is described in the airports authority agreement as "including without limitation to the Dulles Toll Road, Dulles Access Road, outer roadways adjacent or parallel thereto, mass transit, including rail, bus rapid transit, and capacity enhancing treatments such as high-occupancy vehicle lanes, high-occupancy toll lanes, interchange improvements, commuter parking lots and other transportation management strategies."

Springfield Supervisor Patrick Herrity (R) pointed out that many Loudoun County residents pay to use the Dulles Toll Road, though he was not in favor of the toll revenue being used for the Route 606 expansion.

"606 is an important project but it needs to find another funding source," said Herrity.

Even if toll road money could be used for a Loudoun project, it should have to take a back seat to the toll road’s other funding priorities, said the supervisors.

The toll revenue should pay for the toll road’s operations, the Metrorail project, the corridor’s express bus service and the toll road’s capital projects before funding a project like the Loudoun County Parkway expansion.

Fairfax County may need the toll road to pick up the $6 million tab for the express bus service that is currently provided along the Dulles Toll Road. The state had told Fairfax that they would fund the express buses, which have approximately 14,000 daily riders, until the first group of new Metro stations opened. But the commonwealth has indicated that it may have to back out of that commitment because of the current budget woes, said Fairfax County executive Anthony Griffin.

In 2007, Fairfax contributed $50,000 toward a "Dulles loop" study to look at what improvements should be made to Route 50, Route 28 and Route 606 on the condition that toll road revenue not be spent on the project.

The Route 28 tax district ended up paying for its road upgrades and the commonwealth is funding improvements to Route 50 but another funding source was never identified for Route 606, said Hudgins.