Toll Road To Fund Rail Line To Dulles

Airports authority officials said in December that they would also put $360 million in improvements to the toll road. The authority already handles maintenance for the free Dulles Access Road. The deal would add the toll road to those responsibilities.

When the federal government decided to build Dulles Airport in the 1950s, it also acquired a 17-mile highway corridor to provide access to the airport. Today, the corridor includes the Dulles Toll Road and the Dulles Access Road. Virginia operates the toll road, which opened in 1984, under an agreement with the authority that runs until 2082.

The deal that state officials plan to announce today would cancel that agreement, and the toll road would come under control of the airports authority. Authority officials have said they would fund the state and federal share of the rail line by regularly raising tolls on drivers, but they have not provided any specifics about how often and how much they would raise prices.

Tolls rose in May to 75 cents at the main plaza and 50 cents at other ramps. The highway runs 12 miles between McLean and Loudoun County and generates $65 million annually.

Cost estimates for the rail project, essentially an extension of the Orange Line, have varied over time. A recent estimate for the total cost of the 23-mile line is $3.84 billion. The first phase, from West Falls Church through Tysons Corner to Wiehle Avenue in Reston, is expected to cost $1.8 billion. The second phase, which would stretch from Wiehle Avenue to the airport before ending at Route 772 in Loudoun, is estimated to cost $2 billion.

The funding plan for the project calls for the federal government to pay 50 percent, and for state and local communities to each pay 25 percent. The airports authority would cover the state and federal share; landowners along the first phase of the route have agreed to a special tax district to cover the local share.

By assuming both the state and federal share of the second phase, the authority would free the project from a lengthy federal approval process.

The airports authority, created in 1987 by the federal government to manage Dulles and Reagan National airports, proposed taking over construction of the project late last year after several private companies sought to take over operation of the toll road. Authority officials, concerned that the rail link to the airport would never be built, made their own offer.