Apparently in Virginia—our newest, craziest blue state—they have a special road to the airport that you aren’t allowed to use unless you’re going to the airport. Everybody wants to use it to go past the airport to their exurban Dulles homes but that’s against the law. They are supposed to take the charmingly named Dulles Toll Road instead. The cops’ enforcement scheme is not at all disturbing or typically Virginian:

Airport police occasionally conduct stings in which they use borrowed rental cars to follow drivers through the airport. If drivers don’t stop and continue onto the access road, they are stopped and ticketed.

It gets crazier:

The problem … is likely to get worse when the Dulles Toll Road raises its rates to help pay for the planned Metrorail extension to the airport.

Idea? Instead of trying to create a fast highway to the airport authoritatively, put a toll on it like that other road. Make it as high as is needed for predictable traffic so that people on their way to catch flights (which cost hundreds of dollars by the way!) do not miss them. Riding the train will cost money, yes? Since when is creating an artificially free and fast drive to the airport worth a police sting operation to catch people using a road for the wrong reason? Why turn down a perfectly great opportunity to charge exactly the right people—airport users—for upgraded transportation to the airport?

Oh, Virginie. La plus ça change, la plus ça reste a bizarre conservative+authoritarian (=fascist???) hellhole.