Rail to Dulles

The airports authority will speed things up, but toll road commuters may pay dearly.

THE DISTANT, GAUZY idea of extending Metrorail to Dulles International Airport and beyond just got a lot more real. Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) agreed in principle to hand control of the Dulles Toll Road corridor to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority -- and with it the plan to extend Metro's Orange Line by 23 miles from West Falls Church to Tysons Corner, the airport and into Loudoun County. By putting the plan in the hands of the entity most interested in seeing it completed, Mr. Kaine has vastly increased its chances. As for whether that's a fair or good idea, it depends largely on whether you are a daily commuter on the toll road. Because if you are, expect to pay a disproportionate share of the cost.

The airports authority has done its best to assure commuters that the price for using the toll road, now 50 to 75 cents, would rise no faster than the rate of inflation. But don't count on it. The authority would be on the hook for roughly half the nearly $4 billion price tag for rail, plus an additional $360 million in road improvements along the corridor. It would retain the right to fix tolls at the level needed to pay for such a massive commitment. In place of the federal government's paying for half of the project, the airports authority would shift the burden to toll road commuters. No one should be surprised when toll prices jump.

Also of concern is how well the authority would manage Metrorail's extension through Tysons Corner, which has become one of the East Coast's largest concentrations of office space and this region's second downtown. Metrorail's promise for Tysons is not only transit; the goal is to help knit that jumble of office parks, shopping centers and highways into something resembling a collection of walkable city neighborhoods. But success at Tysons may not be the authority's priority.

Unsurprisingly, all this makes some Northern Virginia politicians nervous. They want a mechanism by which people could object to toll increases. The airports authority promises "transparency," by which it seems to mean briefing local officials and holding a hearing or two before raising rates. But since the authority's 13-member governing board is appointed, it needn't worry about the wrath of voters; in fact, it would not be strictly accountable (although five of the 13 are Northern Virginians appointed by the governor). So local officials are threatening to block the 25 percent portion of the rail link that would be funded by a special local tax district.

Despite all those problems, other options for extending Metrorail along the toll road are probably worse. Competing private proposals to lease the toll road from the state, while arguably fairer, offered no guarantee the rail project would ever be finished -- or even that the money paid to the state would be returned to Northern Virginia. Those proposals relied heavily on federal funding, which might not have materialized, and the good will of lawmakers in Richmond, who are not known for their generosity to Northern Virginia.

In essence, the state has opted to increase the chances of construction at the expense of fairer burden-sharing. That approach may be imperfect, but in the real world it is probably better than the others.