Officials to Formalize Funding for Dulles Metro Extension

By Amy Gardner

Originally published at 12:00 a.m., March 10, 2009
Updated at 8:19 a.m., March 10, 2009

U.S. transportation officials will seal their commitment to a long-planned extension of Metro to Dulles International Airport at a ceremony today in which Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is to sign a formal agreement to provide $900 million in funding considered crucial to the project's success.

But the real action will start in a matter of days about 15 miles to the west, where demolition of roads and bridges and heavy construction of overhead piers will become an unwelcome fact of life during the next six years for commuters and residents of McLean, Tysons Corner, Vienna and beyond. The result, boosters say, will be worth it: a public transit system serving the region's primary international airport and Virginia's most prosperous jobs corridor.

Today's ceremony, scheduled for 10 a.m. at the Department of Transportation's headquarters near the Washington Navy Yard, will feature a roster of local, state and federal luminaries seeking to revel in -- and take credit for -- the project's success. Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), U.S. Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) and Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), are among those expected to attend.

These and other project boosters fought skeptical federal transit regulators for much of the past year after it became clear that the Federal Transit Administration, citing cost and schedule overruns and poor management, was inclined to reject Virginia's application for federal assistance. The $5.2 billion Silver Line, which will extend from northwest Arlington to the airport and into Loudoun County, has doubled in cost in recent years.

But supporters pressed for the project to move forward. They cited the overwhelming need for congestion relief along Northern Virginia's Dulles corridor and the imperative to provide an alternative to highway travel to help reduce regional carbon emissions. A bonus, leaders have said, is the hope that the 23-mile rail line will trigger an urban-style development renaissance, particularly around four planned stations in Tysons Corner.

The Bush administration's transportation team agreed to approve Dulles rail in January, two weeks before leaving office, and President Obama's administration has embraced the project. Today's signing ceremony marks the end of a mandatory 60-day congressional comment period following approval of the project.

The project's first phase, estimated to cost about $2.6 billion and to be finished by 2013, will extend from just past the East Falls Church Metro station on the Orange Line, through Tysons and along the median of the Dulles Access Road to Wiehle Avenue in Reston. The second phase, expected to cost about the same and to be completed by 2015, will extend to the airport and beyond into Loudoun County.

The Silver Line will run along the median of the Dulles Access Road for most of its journey, with an aerial track carrying it through Tysons Corner despite a strong grassroots push to build underground. Regulators and politicians alike said a tunnel would have been prohibitively expensive and would have set the regulatory process back at least a year, imperiling the entire project. The extension will run underground for a short distance in Tysons, at the intersection of Routes 7 and 123.

Tagged: Dulles, Dulles Airport, Gov. Tim Kaine, metro extension, transportation

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