State and airports authority officials are expected within days to make public the price tag for the first half of the new rail to Dulles, an announcement that comes as speculation swirls around the closed-door talks on the transit project.
Negotiations are expected to end no later than April 5, the date the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority set as the ultimate cutoff after months of missed deadlines.
MWAA and Virginia transit officials still have the option to walk away if they can’t reach a cost agreement with Dulles Transit Partners. The team of contractors, composed of Bechtel Infrastructure and Washington Group International, wants to design and build the first phase of the 23-mile Metrorail extension.
Little is known publicly about the details of the negotiations because the Virginia Public-Private Transportation Act allows the parties to keep almost all information under lock and key. Rumors circulating among transportation officials and staff suggest that Dulles Transit Partners came to the table with a price several hundred million dollars higher than what the federal government funding guidelines will allow.
Tysonstunnel.org, a group pushing for 3.4 miles of the track to run in a tunnel under Tysons, has set up an online “Doomsday Clock” that on Wednesday had a scant eight days remaining. The group this week sent the Federal Transit Administration a petition to open the entire project for bidding and conduct further study of the underground route.
“A sole-source deal is expected to be signed before April 5th!” the group declared on its Web site. “We can’t let that happen!”
Gov. Tim Kaine nixed the tunnel last fall after the FTA warned that associated costs and delays would make project ineligible for $900 million in federal funds, a loss that would likely sink the entire rail extension for the foreseeable future. The current plan calls for an aerial track.
Nearly all the controversies surrounding the pending contract were touched off, at least in the public sphere, after the demise of thetunnel. Critics have described the MWAA and Virginia as secretive and unaccountable, and blasted the pending contract as “no-bid.” Virginia officials have fired back that their project, though it didn’t go through traditional sealed bidding, was nevertheless competitive.
