Contradictions Surface in Dulles Rail Talks

Kaine Says Federal Slam Is a U-Turn; FTA Says Va. Knew of Its Concerns

Federal transportation officials gave incremental approvals to the proposed Metrorail extension to Dulles International Airport on many of the same issues that they cited in rejecting it this week, according to letters, memos and interviews.

At several points in the past two years, Federal Transit Administration officials said the project was doing fine on cost and construction management, according to the correspondence and phone calls with Virginia officials.

But Thursday, the tone changed. FTA chief James S. Simpson declared the project unfit for federal funding. And he pointed to many of the issues that project officials and Virginia politicians had thought were settled and done with.

"All indications were pointing to a thumbs-up," Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) said yesterday. "And then it turns out to be a likely thumbs-down."

But Simpson and other FTA officials said they have been saying for years that the project's costs were dangerously high, its schedule too long and its management structure precarious.

"No one associated with the Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project should be surprised by its escalating costs and risks," Simpson said yesterday. The FTA and the project managers "have been in communication regarding these challenges."

But Kaine and the members of Northern Virginia's congressional delegation said they were stunned when Simpson told them at a meeting Thursday that the 23-mile extension through Tysons Corner to the airport would not get its $900 million in federal funding without drastic changes in the proposal. Without that money, the project would die.

The opposing views of the negotiations highlight a dramatic contrast between the state officials responsible for building the $5 billion transit project and the federal agency responsible for regulating it. And they show that the two sides either had woeful communication along the way or that the message drastically changed. Taxpayers have spent more than $140 million on the planning stages.

Kaine and other Virginia officials mentioned specific communications they think contradict the FTA's assertions. In rejecting the proposal Thursday, the FTA cited the project's cost, which has ballooned over the years of planning; the ability of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority to manage construction of such a large transit project when it has never done so; and the ability of Metro to absorb the extension into a system that is underfunded and needs repairs.

The contradictory evidence dates at least to October 2006, the governor and others said, when the FTA wrote the airports authority a letter declaring the agency fit to serve as the "grantee" for the federal funding the project was seeking.

"FTA has determined that [the airports authority] has or will have the legal, financial and technical capacity to carry out the program," wrote FTA regional administrator Susan Borinsky.

Similarly, last January, Simpson told two Northern Virginia congressmen in writing that "the only significant outstanding issue at this time" is the project's cost, seemingly putting to rest any management issues regarding the airports authority or Metro.