When WTOP radio reporter Mark Seagraves asked Gov. Tim Kaine yesterday if the Dulles Rail project is dead, Virginia’s chief executive confidently responded that “it is not.” He acknowledged, however, that “we got some troubling news from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), concerns about funding and some other concerns, but we feel like we can answer them, particularly the funding.” But as important as funding is, those “other concerns” represent a much bigger problem: The Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority (MWAA), which is managing the Dulles Rail project, has yet to address a lengthy list of design and technical problems that Metro says must be fixed before it will accept the finished 23-mile rail extension. Of greater concern, Metro warns that once the project “is in final design, it may be too late to start resolving these issues.” So even if money poured from the heavens, the Dulles Rail project could be orphaned at birth and then cost billions more to make it acceptable to Metro for adoption.
As William Flook reports in today’s Examiner, John D. Thomas, director of Metro’s major capital projects warned Dulles Rail project director Charles “Sam” Carnaggio in a Jan. 16 letter that MWAA’s failure to address dozens of technical problems — many dealing with power sources at the heart of the project — suggests “that MWAA is not interested in [their] timely resolution.” Kaine knew about this serious intra-agency dispute because FTA Administrator James Simpson described it in a Jan. 24 letter, saying federal officials are “concerned about potential conflicts between MWAA, as the sponsor and constructor, and [Metro], as the ultimate owner-operator and the authority on technical standards for the project.” Simpson warned Kaine that FTA has previously seen firsthand how such conflicts in other transit projects — i.e., Boston’s Big Dig — increase “risks of cost escalation and schedule delays.” Kaine’s failure to tell WTOP’s large listening audience about this problem is yet another example of the official double talk that has characterized the Dulles Rail project from the beginning.
Fairfax County Supervisor Gerald Connollyhas contributed his share of double talk. It’s clearly time to take another look at bus rapid transit (BRT). But Connolly disingenuously said Monday that BRT has been “looked at thoroughly.” Actually, Fairfax County was eligible for a federal New Starts demonstration BRT project in 1999 that would have paid 90 percent of the cost of extending BRT from the West Falls Church Metro station to Dulles Airport. But special interests in Tysons Corner and their friends in state and local government hijacked that effort and morphed it into Dulles Rail. Had they accepted federal funding then, passengers would be riding BRT to and from the airport today.
