Northern Virginia business leaders on Thursday proposed cutting $1 billion in costs from the Dulles Rail project, saying excess expenses are threatening to kill the entire $6 billion-plus effort. The pinstriped contingent, including the presidents of Fairfax and Loudoun area chambers of commerce, backed construction of an aboveground Metro station at Washington Dulles International Airport that would cost about $330 million less than the underground station favored by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, the group overseeing the project.
The business leaders also demanded that the authority drop its proposed union-friendly labor agreements, saying they violate the state’s right-to-work status and drive up the project’s costs. They also called for an increase in funding from federal and state sources and Metro that could save localities millions more.
With their demands, the business community joins a powerful contingent of Northern Virginia officials — from county supervisors to members of Congress — hammering home to the airports authority the need to keep costs in check. The authority is responsible for the project, but the bulk of the costs will fall to Northern Virginia taxpayers and Dulles Toll Road users.
Eliminating the authority’s proposal for a labor agreement favorable to unions could reduce the cost of the project’s second phase by as much as 14 percent, or about $400 million, said Jim Corcoran, president and chief executive officer of the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce. That figure is hotly contested by local union advocates, and is based on a study of three northeastern projects by a Massachusetts-based free-market think tank.
Tony Howard, Corcoran’s Loudoun County counterpart, said he and his peers are “candidly agnostic” about other ways to save money, meaning if the airports authority can achieve sufficient savings and still have an underground station, few would complain.
But if the authority mandates union-friendly labor practices in a right-to-work state, that’s a “totally different animal,” Howard said.
The business sector’s cost saving measures come as local, state, and airports authority leaders enter their fourth week of meetings with U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. LaHood on June 1 gave the group 30 days to work out an agreement on the project’s costs.
