| Time
for Dulles Rail is Now, But Without More Tolls |
| The stalling last week of federal support for the project
to bring rail to Dulles Airport highlighted a number of shortcomings
in the rail proposal, in state transportation planning and
in federal budget priorities. But most importantly it illustrated
how easy it is to be shortsighted about the project. |
| Since the rail project has come to life in the past few
years, the price tag has escalated pretty dramatically, and
today most everyone considers it to be a $5 billion endeavor.
But here's the thing about that $5 billion: It's not going
to get any cheaper. |
| The nature of large public infrastructure investments such
as these is that the price tag rises as the economy grows.
In the same way that your home continues to gain value, so
do the costs of everything related to construction of the
rail. Nails cost more, land costs increase, labor prices rise,
insurance costs go up, gasoline becomes more expensive, electricity
prices go higher, etc. |
| The price tag is hefty, and seems to be going up on a regular
basis. But our local chambers of commerce are correct that
a rail line to Dulles would be an economic engine that would
fuel growth from Tysons Corner to Leesburg over the next 50
years and beyond. Not only would a Metro line make it easier
for more people to come here from around the Washington, D.C.,
area, it would attract more corporate employers and development.
A Metro line would encourage more of the hundreds of thousands
of tourists and business travelers passing through Dulles
Airport each year to stay in this area overnight, and patronize
our local establishments, because they will be able to get
to wherever they want to go along the rail line. |
| The detractors of extending Metro to Dulles say the price
tag is too high, that we can spend a lot less money making
basic transportation improvements—such as improving bus service
and adding more traffic lanes to the Dulles Toll Road—that
will provide quicker and more effective relief to traffic
congestion. |
| And they are right. Adding highway lanes and widening roads
is a lot cheaper than building rail. Adding buses is effective
and relatively cheap. But those investments won't get you
where you want to be in 50 years. The population of our communities
will continue to increase. Traffic on the Dulles Toll Road,
and all roads in Northern Virginia, will continue to get worse. |
| If we added a new lane to the Dulles Toll Road every five
years for the next 50 years, we would still have congestion
during rush hours—and we'd have a highway that was wider than
the Potomac. Given the economic development that will come
over the next few decades, traffic can only increase. |
| The question is whether you prepare today for the level
of traffic we anticipate to have in 50 years by spending $5
billion, or whether you put the project off for another 10,
20, 30 years, and pay $15 billion or more to eventually bring
rail out to Dulles. The benefits provided by a rail extension
to Dulles Airport are clear to me and to many others. But
the Federal Transit Administration's negative assessment of
the project last week brought up several elements of the plan
that need to be addressed if Virginia is going to capture
the advantage of the rail extension and get ahead of future
traffic growth. |
| |
| No
More Tolls |
| First, the funding plan for the rail extension highlights
Virginia's consistent inability to pay for its own transportation
infrastructure. Del. Tom Rust (R-86th) powered a complicated
transportation funding bill through the General Assembly last
year, but he had to do so without directly raising taxes or
putting any burden on taxpayers statewide. |
| Construction of the Dulles Toll Road was paid for by tolls
because the state could not or would not even pay for the
road itself. Today, the Dulles corridor is one of the leading
economies in the state, and Virginia still can't bring itself
to fund necessary transportation improvements to keep the
engine running smoothly. |
| If Virginia had its priorities straight, the state would
be paying for 50 percent of the rail project, the federal
government would be expected to pony up 40 percent, and Fairfax
County would be contributing 10 percent—none of it through
tolls. |
| In the current financing plan, Fairfax County is responsible
for putting up just as much money for the rail project as
the entire state. If Virginia had a proper transportation
planning system, it would have recognized the direction Northern
Virginia needs were heading in and begun planning for investment
20 years ago. |
| In the immediate aftermath of the federal government's comments
last week, some rail supporters suggested that private industry
might be able to step in and put up the money that was expected
from the federal government. We have only to look at the Dulles
Greenway to know that would be a disaster. |
| The Dulles Greenway was built by private investors, again
because Virginia would not put up the funds to build the road.
A few years later … surprise! Tolls started to go up. Recently,
the owners of the road received permission from the state
to increase the tolls to as much as $4.80 each direction in
the coming years. |
| Turning the Dulles Toll Road over to profiteers would shift
the cost of building rail to Dulles onto the backs of the
toll road users, and it would be another way for Virginia
to skip out on the bill of a major and necessary public infrastructure
improvement. |
| |
| Fund
Metro |
| One of the objections the FTA brought up last week was that
the current Metro system is under-funded and would have a
hard time adding a new line to its system. Recent reports
have show that Metro needs $150 million in improvements just
to keep some of its stations from falling apart and to keep
the electricity moving to all the cars it needs. |
| This is a problem. But it should not be a consideration
for whether rail to Dulles should be funded or not. Metro
will never have fewer passengers than it has now. It will
never have fewer stations than it has now. It will never need
fewer cars than it has now. Its electric bill is never going
to be cheaper than it is now. |
| If Metro's budget is out of whack, fix it. Today it's rail
to Dulles. Ten years from now it'll be extending rail down
the I-95 corridor, or adding a Virginia line from Route 7
to Route 1, or adding another rail line in Maryland. Metro
has to have funds to maintain its infrastructure and grow.
If anybody ever thought differently, then the system never
should have been built in the first place. |
| As for timing, the Dulles rail Silver Line is not planned
to be operational for at least five years from the start of
construction. That gives federal transit administrators and
the U.S. Congress plenty of time to develop a budget for Metro
that works, for its existing needs and its growing needs. |
| |
| Get
to the Airport |
| Finally, the federal government should get its own priorities
in order and embrace the idea of building rail to Dulles Airport.
When the airport was built in the early 1960s, it was considered
a "white elephant," an airport built way out in the country
by influential politicians who were catering to voters. |
| Today, Dulles Airport is one of the major cargo centers
along the eastern seaboard. It is an economic engine not just
for Northern Virginia, but also for the entire Washington,
D.C., region. And it helps bring millions of tourists to the
nation's capital each year. |
| Paying $900 million and guaranteeing some loans to have
a public rail line serving Dulles Airport is a bargain for
the federal government, and they should jump at the chance. |
| What is clear is that a rail line will be essential to the
Dulles corridor looking ahead over the next half-century,
and postponing it will only increase the cost and delay the
public from taking advantage of the benefits rail would bring. |
| Even so, planners should not develop a knee-jerk reaction,
such as turning the project over to private investors or putting
a greater burden upon toll road users, simply to get the rail
line built sooner rather than later. |
