Metro is poised to back down from plans to charge the Dulles Rail project an extra $75 million for new rail cars, instead laying out an agreement to share the costs of designing and developing them.
The draft proposal, which Metro’s board of directors is slated to approve Thursday, calls for sharing the costs equally with the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which is overseeing the long-awaited extension of the line to Washington Dulles International Airport and beyond.
MWAA spokeswoman Tara Hamilton declined to comment on the exact proposal but told The Washington Examiner that project officials have been working closely with Metro and had “a very positive discussion.”
In April, Dulles Rail officials complained to Metro that the transit agency was placing the burden on it to pay for new rail cars. At the time, Metro was planning to buy 64 rail cars for the extension to the airport, charging Dulles Rail $4.1 million per car for the first batch.
But subsequent rail cars tacked onto the order would have cost the transit agency as little as $2.5 million each, which MWAA said would effectively mean the entire $100 million-$120 million cost for engineering, prototype development and design would have fallen on the rail project.
But subsequent rail cars tacked onto the order would have cost the transit agency as little as $2.5 million each, which MWAA said would effectively mean the entire $100 million-$120 million cost for engineering, prototype development and design would have fallen on the rail project.
Under the new draft agreement, Metro and MWAA would share the development costs “50/50,” bringing the costs to an estimated $3.09 million per car. MWAA is supervising construction of what has been called the Silver Line but eventually will turn it over to Metro to operate as part of the Metrorail network.
Metro plans to award the rail car contract to Kawasaki Rail Car Inc., with a base order for 64 rail cars for Dulles Rail, then two additional options to add 64 more cars for Dulles Rail and another 300 cars to replace Metro’s oldest cars, the Rohr 1000 series. Federal officials have called those cars uncrashworthy for years.
The new rail cars, known as 7000 series cars, include stronger steel bodies that better withstand crashes, brighter lighting, closed-circuit cameras and flexible seating configurations. But they come in units of four so trains can run only as four-car or eight-car trains, instead of six-car trains. They won’t be able to couple together with older model railcars, according to the agency, except in case of emergency.
