The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority originally projected that the so-called Silver Line would begin carrying passengers to the airport by 2016. But the authority’s latest plans for the completion of the 23-mile Dulles Rail project show that construction won’t be complete until as late as the summer of 2017. A committee of board members was supposed to make a recommendation for building the station either above or below ground, but deferred that decision after a debate about costs. While an underground station would be 600 feet closer to the airport terminal, it would cost between $240 million and $350 million more than an aboveground station.
Either way, the completion dates were moved back by as much as a year by the airports authority Wednesday.
Officials for the state of Virginia, as well as Loudoun and Fairfax counties, have urged the board be “cost-sensitive” and prefer the less expensive aboveground station. Cost estimates for the second phase of the Dulles Rail project are now roughly $6.5 billion, about $1 billion higher than original estimates. Fairfax County expects to pay for 16 percent of the second phase of construction.
“We have to be focused on cost, and our funding partners are right in insisting on that,” said board member Robert Brown, who urged the committee to look at other areas of the project for potential savings.
But an independent advisory group recommended the board choose the underground station as the better alternative since it would provide passengers a protected and direct route to the airport.
An underground station would also have a longer service life, and repairs to underground tracks are needed less frequently than outdoor rails, according to Brenda Bohlke, president of Myers Bohlke Enterprise.
However, an underground station would take six months longer to complete than an aboveground station, which officials estimate could be completed by the end of 2016.
“It’s a long-term investment,” Bohlke said, “and we think the cost differential is worth the price.”
Officials said the project will be completed on budget, despite reporting that MWAA has already spent $184 million of its $312 million contingency fund as of January.
