Metro officials are opposing a cost-cutting proposal that would move the planned Washington Dulles International Airport Metrorail station some 600 feet farther away from the airport’s main terminal.
“We have one chance to get this right, and cost containment cannot be the only driver of where this station goes,” said Metro board of directors member and Fairfax County Supervisor Jeff McKay.
“The closer the station is to the terminal, the more convenient it is and the more people that will use it,” he said.
The station move, which could shave roughly $640 million off the cost of the Dulles Metrorail extension project, was proposed by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority after recent cost estimates showed Phase 2 of the extension project were more than $1 billion higher than original estimates.
Latest cost projections put the project’s total price tag at roughly $6.5 billion.
Metro board member Chris Zimmerman said he agreed with McKay, and pointed to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport’s old Metro station as an example of why it was important for the Dulles station to be built as close as possible to the airport’s main terminal.
He said Reagan’s original rail station, located roughly 1,000 feet from the terminal and beyond the airport’s parking lot, “might as well have been a mile away.”
“When you can get your bags and see the train and get there sooner than you can get to a car, [that] makes a big difference,” Zimmerman said.
The Metro board, which would take operating control of the proposed Dulles rail station, does not have final say as to where the station would be. But the board does have to sign off on any changes to the project’s approved plan, which places the rail station at Dulles’ main terminal.
Chairman Peter Benjamin and several other board members pointed out that the placement of the Metro station would affect rail riders for decades to come.
“What is built here will be used for 100 years or more,” Benjamin said. “We need to learn from the experience that the airports authority had at Washington National.”
The airports authority has indicated that it could decide on a final plan for the station’s location before the end of the year.
