York: Loudoun, Fairfax Not MWAA's 'Cash Cows'

The Loudoun Board of Supervisors chose to ponder a proposal to reduce costs on the second phase of the Dulles rail project Wednesday after County Administrator Tim Hemstreet and County Chairman Scott K. York explained the proposal.

York  (I-At Large) said an hour-long meeting he attended the day before made it clear that the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority’s board of directors was no nearer compromising its support of an underground rail station at Dulles Airport, a key point of contention.

“I was a little taken a back that we were told by MWAA officials in this meeting that those of us who support an aerial station ought to be ashamed of ourselves and to remember that we are the richest per household income counties in the nation. And therefore there should be no problem building what they perceive as a world-class station at a world-class airport,” York said. “I’m just surprised that they just don’t get it.”

MWAA was tasked with constructing Metro’s Silver Line, which as planned will run from Falls Church to Dulles Airport and beyond to Ashburn. However, as engineers designed the project’s second phase – the first phase ends at Wiehle Avenue in Reston – the cost estimate jumped from $2.5 billion to $3.83 billion.

MWAA initially estimated $600 million could be saved by building an aerial station at the airport, but later zeroed in on an underground station at the railroad engineers estimated at about $300 million. Despite a barrage of calls to move toward an aerial route, MWAA has stood firm.

“The funding partners clearly believe that the aerial station is not, is not, inconvenient to the passengers,” York said Wednesday. “And more importantly, Loudoun County and Fairfax County are not cash cows for MWAA.”

Under LaHood’s proposal, Fairfax County would have to find a way to pay for two parking decks and the Route 28 station, while Loudoun County would have to pay for three parking decks. By removing those items and a few others from the project, the cost could be reduced to about $2.77 billion. Loudoun, Fairfax and the Commonwealth of Virginia are finance partners in the project, with the state paying the lion’s share. At $2.77 billion, Loudoun’s share would drop from about $300 million to about $265 million for construction.

York said he told a representative for LaHood the proposal raised concerns for Loudoun because it may be difficult to finance construction of the parking decks.

“I represented in this meeting simply that I’m very concerned about taking on the three garages in Loudoun County,” York said, referring to the meeting with MWAA and LaHood’s representative. “We just don’t really have the financial means to put it in our scope unless we’re going to pay cash for it.”

Hemstreet explained that the state had offered to put another $150 million toward the project, obtained from means other than tolls along the Dulles Toll Road. In addition, Hemstreet said, because of their respective credit ratings, Loudoun and Fairfax could use federal funds to finance the decks through a type of loan unavailable to MWAA.

If Loudoun then found a private partner, a public private partnership could be formed to construct parking decks, “and thereby taking any debt monkeys off our backs,” York said. “We would just be the facilitators in terms of working with the development community to make this happen.”

York said Fairfax has already agreed that they’d support decks if MWAA supports aerial. York said the MWAA board was clearly unhappy afterward.

“MWAA has been fighting tooth and nail, still kicking and screaming from this meeting,” he told fellow supervisors.