Instead, DOT has decided to provide TIFIA assistance to the counties for the privatization of the Metrorail parking garages. Perhaps the department thought TIFIA for these projects would make it easier to persuade Fairfax and Loudoun to swallow the additional financial burden, although it’s not clear that developers in wealthy Northern Virginia need federal support or that these two wealthy counties need federal help in attracting private developers. But whatever the reasons, DOT’s bottom line is this: Yes to federal assistance for private parking garage developers; no to federal assistance for Northern Virginia’s heavily burdened toll payers.
Virginia’s representatives were perhaps the most vocal participants in the meetings with the secretary. They were relentless advocates for cost reductions. But other than pounding the table for lower costs, Richmond had little to offer Northern Virginians.
After much tugging and pulling, Virginia seems to have agreed to inject $150 million into this $3 billion project (though the governor is reluctant to give a firm commitment even for that puny amount). Yet the state has no reluctance to make hefty contributions to other large state projects.
The day after the airports authority voted to change the airport station, Virginia announced that it would provide approximately $400 million to the $2 billion midtown tunnel project in Norfolk — for the explicit purpose of reducing toll rates. Virginia also has injected $400 million into the $2 billion Beltway HOT lanes project (which got a $600 million TIFIA loan). Both of those projects are privatized.
Most Northern Virginians want Dulles Metrorail, for both the transportation service it will provide and the economic development it will stimulate, and are willing to contribute to its cost. But across Virginia and around the nation, other communities are getting major state and federal support for transportation infrastructure. Once they begin paying double-digit tolls, Northern Virginians may wonder why the federal government and their own governor are leaving them to fend for themselves.
Robert Clarke Brown
, Shaker Heights, Ohio
The writer chairs the finance committee of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority board of directors.
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