Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell is calling on regional airport officials to reconsider their plan to build an underground Metro station at Washington Dulles International Airport, reminding them that the Northern Virginia officials who must fund the project have already warned that they “cannot and will not” pay for the more expensive underground station. Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Chairman Charles Snelling said the authority is willing to discuss the decision but will not change its plans to build the underground station even though it costs about $330 million more than the aboveground station favored by Fairfax and Loudoun counties, which will pay for it.
“Reconsidering the decision [to build the station underground] is not an option,” Snelling said. “Finding ways to handle the matter to the satisfaction of our partners certainly is an option,”
McDonnell’s entry into the debate marks an escalation of a disagreement between the counties and the airports authority, which controls the multibillion-dollar expansion of Metrorail from East Falls Church to Dulles and into Loudoun County.
“The tunnel alignment has, by all accounts, been shown to be the much more expensive alignment through the airport, costing hundreds of millions more than the aerial alignment with relatively minimal positive logistical or aesthetic benefit,” McDonnell wrote in a letter to Snelling.
In his letter, McDonnell recounted the position taken by the boards of supervisors in Fairfax and Loudoun and by state Secretary of Transportation Sean Connaughton, who declared that they “cannot and will not fund the additional cost of the tunnel alternative in Dulles Airport when a less expensive alternative can be constructed with less risk and in a shorter period of time.”
The underground station, which would be about 600 feet closer to the airport terminal than the above-ground option, is projected to cost $330 million more. But the airports authority said other parts of the project budget could be trimmed enough to reduce the additional cost to about $230 million.
Phase two of the project, which includes the station, is to be completed by 2017. It was originally expected to cost about $2.5 billion, but estimates have since ballooned beyond $3 billion.
Snelling would not comment on McDonnell’s letter, saying he’ll wait to receive it.
“We are certainly going to have private conversations with our partners that I expect will make everyone reasonably comfortable,” he said.
