WASHINGTON, D.C. — A coalition of business, civic and environmental groups urged Virginia officials yesterday to abandon plans to build a costly rail line to Dulles International Airport and instead adopt a rapid bus system as a cheaper and more flexible alternative, the Washington Post reported.
At a news conference in Reston, the groups called on the 17-member Commonwealth Transportation Board, which must approve major projects in the state, to halt further studies of the Dulles rail plan, saying the money would be better spent on a bus rapid transit system that could be built more quickly to provide relief from traffic congestion.
In launching a campaign that they hope will reprise the grass-roots opposition to last month’s sales tax referendum, the anti-rail groups also voiced alarm at proposals to help pay the project’s estimated $4 billion price tag by raising property taxes on Dulles corridor businesses and tolls on the Dulles Toll Road. They unveiled signs with a red line through a Metro car and the slogans, “No New Tolls” and “No New Taxes.”
The Commonwealth Transportation Board is scheduled to meet next week to choose what it would prefer as a mass transit system in the Dulles corridor. The board is expected to endorse an extension of the Metrorail system, an option supported by the governments of Fairfax and Loudoun counties, the Metro board and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which owns the right of way needed for any mass transit system to Dulles.
By adopting rail, the board would officially submit the project to the federal government, the main source of funding, and seek approval from the Federal Transit Administration to begin preliminary engineering studies.
But the Federal Transit Administration warned Virginia officials last week that the proposed 24-mile rail line to Dulles, with construction lasting well into the next decade, could be too expensive and carry too few riders to receive federal approval. Administrator Jennifer L. Dorn told the officials to consider building rail only as far as Tysons Corner and extending service to Dulles with bus rapid transit — a bus service that would use buslike vehicles stopping at stations along the way, as a train would.
“Despite FTA’s warning, we are concerned that the [Commonwealth Transportation Board] may authorize millions of additional dollars for more studies of rail to Dulles,” said Thomson M. Hirst, a commercial property owner in Reston and president of the Reston-based Rapid Transit Action Committee, a business and civic group that supports bus rapid transit. “This would be a complete waste of money.”
In an interview, Katherine K. Hanley (D-At Large), chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and a strong advocate of rail to Dulles, disagreed.
“Nobody said no to rail,” she said. “They just said we don’t have the money to build rail all the way to Dulles and Loudoun right now.”
Hanley said she hopes the Commonwealth Transportation Board will endorse the county’s recommendation to keep rail moving forward.
Instead of constructing what she called a “white elephant” of a bus system, she advocates enhancing traditional bus service in the Dulles corridor.
But advocates say a rapid bus system would not only take much less time to build (about three years) than a rail extension, but would cost roughly $300 million to $400 million, a fraction of what rail would, Hirst said at the news conference.
“We don’t have the time to wait anymore,” said Bill Vincent, general counsel of the Breakthrough Technologies Institute, a Washington think tank that advocates bus rapid transit.
Also represented at the news conference were landowners opposed to the rail project and Toll Road neighbors who worry that rising tolls would send more traffic onto their residential streets.
Ken Reid, a spokesman for the Rapid Transit Action Committee, said tolls on the Dulles road — now typically 75 cents each way — could rise to as much as $2.25 to fund the state’s contribution to a rail project. Commercial property owners said they would face an increase of 40 cents per $100 of assessed value to help pay Fairfax County’s share of the bill.