Airport officials voted Wednesday to pursue initial engineering plans for the second leg of the Dulles Metrorail Project at a probable completion date of 2016, a year later than expected.
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which is managing the 23-mile rail project, set in motion the earliest work on the final half of the rail that will connect Washington Dulles International Airport and Loudoun County with the Metro system.
The delay stems from a protracted quarrel over the first 11.6-mile portion of the track, which languished as the federal government threatened to withhold $900 million in funding principally because the rail was too expensive to justify its cost.
But now that the Federal Transit Administration has relented and major work is ramping up on the first phase through Tysons Corner and Reston, officials have turned to figuring out how to finish the mammoth transit venture.
The airports authority hopes to have the preliminary engineering contract in place by the end of the year, and award a design and construction contract by 2011, said Patrick Nowakowski, Dulles Rail’s executive project director.
A larger financing questions looms. The rail’s second half will be paid for through a special tax district in Fairfax County, proceeds from the Dulles Toll Road and funds from Loudoun County. The tax district, which has not been established, would be similar to the one set up in Tysons Corner, extracting an extra levy from commercial landowners in exchange for the tremendous benefits in land values that come with the addition of rail.
The cost of the second phase also remains nebulous, especially since the project has a long history of bursting through price estimates. The entire 23-mile track is now officially slated to cost $5.2 billion.
“We really need to get preliminary engineering done to get that estimate more up to date,” Nowakowski said.
