The Federal Transit Administration has rejected Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine’s proposed cuts to the multi-billion first leg of the planned Metrorail extension to Dulles airport and prescribed a series of nearly impossible ways to save the project, likelyspelling doom for the embattled rail line in the near future.
“Our process is a very Darwinian process. We wish it was simple enough that we could just write a check,” said FTA Administrator James S. Simpson at a press conference this afternoon at Department of Transportation headquarters.
Besides the planned rail not serving enough riders to justify its cost, the FTA said its manager, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, has too-limited experience with large transit projects and Metro lacks a dedicated funding source to sustain the expansion.
Without fixing the problems, which appear to be insurmountable in the near term, the project will not receive a crucial $900 million in federal funding.
The project receives only a “medium-low rating” for federal funding under the agency’s cost-benefit analysis, which makes it ineligible to move forward, Simpson told Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine in a letter today.
The issues are much different than a year ago, when the U.S. Department of Transportation told Kaine that only a single question remained to determine if the first leg of Dulles Rail would qualify for the federal funds: whether the project would carry enough riders to justify its multi-billion dollar cost.
Kaine told The Examiner today that he and other officials before today had been led to believe that $300 million in cost cuts to the now $2.5 billion track had satisfied the FTA’s cost-benefit concerns.
Without the $900 million from the federal government, the entire project is expected to sink.
The governor has promised to respond to the FTA’s concerns by Monday, sources said.
