Officials responsible for the fate of the Dulles Rail project are finding that with time running out, there are no quick or cheap ways to fund the long-anticipated multibillion-dollar project. “There are a lot of ideas on the table,” said Robert Brown, finance committee chairman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. “It’s become kind of like ‘don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree.’ ”
The project’s stakeholders — Northern Virginia leaders, state transportation officials and the airports authority — have one week to meet the 30-day deadline U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood set for all sides to agree on cost estimates for the project.
The airports authority has final say over the project’s design. Local officials have final say over whether they’ll pay for it. And while the first phase is already designed and funded, details are still in the works for the second phase, in which the rail line will extended from Reston into Loudoun County and a Metro station would be built at Dulles.
Phase two likely will cost about $3.5 billion, 75 percent of which will come from Dulles Toll Road drivers. By 2020, tolls are expected to rise to nearly $11 for a full-length trip on the 14-mile freeway to cover those costs.
The eye-popping tolls led local officials to look for other funding sources, including the federal government, though the outlook isn’t encouraging.
The airports authority applied for a low-interest federal loan of about $1.7 billion that, depending on the terms of the loan, could save hundreds of millions of dollars in debt service alone. But the $1.7 billion request is enormous compared with other applications to the same federal fund, and few are confident the airports authority will get the full amount.
Local officials are also looking to Virginia for money, arguing that the success of the Dulles Corridor is essential to the economic health of the commonwealth.
“The state calls itself a funding partner, but they haven’t put up a plugged nickle [for phase two],” said Tony Howard, president of the Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce.
Virginia could pitch in with a low-interest loan of its own. However, its entire pot of money to be shared among projects statewide is about $280 million, hardly enough to make a significant dent in the price of Dulles Rail.
“Part of what people need to be honest about is that big transportation projects in urban areas are expensive,” Brown said, “and they need to be paid for.”
