Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., is the most recent in a long line of officials jumping on the bandwagon running over the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority for its handling of costs related to the construction of Metrorail to Dulles International Airport and beyond.
Connolly, like his colleague, Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., before him, and Gov. Bob McDonnell before Wolf, and a slew of Fairfax and Loudoun County supervisors before them, expressed “increasing concern” (not quite the “outrage” of Wolf, et al.) with the possibility of an “undue and unfair financial burden on Dulles Toll Road users.”
His statement on Wednesday came in the wake of the authority’s decision to build a more expensive underground station at Dulles, and a report stating that a one-way trip on the Dulles Toll Rd. could cost more than $19 by 2040.
Connolly advised the authority to find savings elsewhere or to raise money through airport user fees. As a last resort, he said, the authority should choose to build a less expensive aboveground Metro station, instead of the underground station, which costs $330 million more.
