Virginia and airports officials announced Thursday they’ve trimmed the price of Dulles rail by more than $300 million without jeopardizing the number of commuters who will use the new Metro line, part of a late bid to salvage the over-budget transit project and win $900 million in crucial federal funds. The Federal Transit Administration is expected to receive the proposal for the project’s first phase Friday, with the overall cost slashed to about $2.5 billion.
Officials say they’ve achieved the cost reduction by changing oversight and procurement practices, revising designs and removing $122 million worth of features with the hope of funding them separately.
The belt-tightening comes after an August report from the FTA that estimated the cost of Dulles rail’s initial 11.6-mile leg of the Metrorail extension to Dulles Airport at $2.83 billion, substantially more than the agency could accommodate under its criteria for cost and ridership. Since then, officials have scrambled to eliminate expenses in the hopes of securing federal moneys.
“We’ve taken that as a good faith challenge, and we’ve worked in good faith to make that happen,” Gov. Tim Kaine said Thursday at a Capitol Hill news conference with other top officials from the commonwealth, Congress and Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.
The FTA, however, has vowed to scrutinize any cuts to the project to ensure they don’t reduce ridership. If it believes the measures will result in fewer than the 50,000 new riders expected to use the line by 2025, it will be that much tougher for the agency to approve the project.
Nevertheless, officials at the news conference hailed the new trimmed-down version of the rail line as a step forward, arguing it is now on more solid ground for federal approval.
Also at Thursday’s news conference, proponents of the scuttled plan to run the Tysons Corner portion of the rail through a tunnel under Tysons Corner criticized the decision to build an aerial track.
Former U.S. Transportation Secretary William Coleman, who has worked for the pro-tunnel group Tysonstunnel.org, told Kaine and others they were making “the biggest mistake” of their careers by not reconsidering the underground track. Kaine defended his decision, arguing that to change the design so substantially would put the entire project in jeopardy.
