WASHINGTON, D.C. — The biggest transit project in the region and one of the largest in the country — a $3.3 billion proposal to build rail to Tysons Corner and Dulles International Airport — nudged ahead yesterday as Metro directors gave initial approval to a draft environmental impact statement, the Washington Post reports.
The idea of building rail to Dulles has been kicking around since the 1950s, but it is finally gaining political, financial and practical momentum. Metro directors say they expect to give final approval to the environmental statement in two weeks, then launch a seven-month period of public comment and hearings on the options. The directors will then vote on a final plan and seek federal acceptance and permission to begin construction.
The draft study analyzes three ways to build rail in the 24-mile Dulles Corridor, which stretches from the West Falls Church Metro station in Fairfax County to Route 772 in Loudoun County. Most of the alignments call for a rail line to run down the median of the Dulles Access Road, but the analysis includes four options for routing rail through Tysons Corner, including two alignments with short tunnels.
The study also looks at several proposals for bus rapid transit, a relatively new kind of transportation that does not exist elsewhere in the region. Bus rapid transit would use 60-foot buses that would travel at high speeds in their own lane on the Dulles Access Road and mimic the behavior of subway cars, stopping at stations to unload and collect passengers along the route. Bus rapid transit doesn’t follow a schedule; service is as frequent as on the subway.
One drawback to bus rapid transit is that it won’t work in Tysons Corner because of the traffic around the shopping centers and office parks, said Metro Chief Operating Officer Richard A. White. Bus rapid transit would have to stay in the median of the Dulles Access Road; passengers bound for Tysons would get off the bus rapid transit at a proposed Spring Hill Road station and then board buses to Tysons, Metro officials said.
Ridership analyses found that rail would attract more than twice as many daily passengers as bus rapid transit and about three times as many new transit trips — passengers who would otherwise drive or not travel at all, according to the draft study. Although bus rapid transit would be cheaper to build and operate than rail, trains would attract more riders for the investment, it said. The draft statement also found that development would be greater around rail stations than around bus rapid transit stations.
At $481 million, a bus rapid transit system from West Falls Church to Loudoun County is the cheapest plan under consideration. Metro projections show that passengers would make 30,300 trips on an average weekday in the first year of operation.
The most expensive plan outlined in the study is a $3.3 billion, two-stage program that calls for bus rapid transit to be built first and then gradually replaced by a rail line. Projections show that passengers would make 71,900 daily trips the year the rail line opened.
The transit project would be funded at the federal, state and regional level. Under a financing plan created by state officials, Virginia would seek 51 percent of the capital cost — the maximum allowed — from the federal government. The state’s share would be $800 million, or about 24 percent, and would be drawn from Dulles Toll Road revenue. State officials plan to raise tolls on the road.
Fairfax would pay $514.1 million, or about 16 percent of the cost, which county officials say would be raised through bonds and a special tax district. Loudoun would owe about $152 million, or 5 percent, while the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority would pay $133.5 million, or 4 percent, from passenger facility charges.
None of the financing for the Dulles project depends on the sales tax referendum that has been under consideration in the Virginia legislature.