Dulles rail talks in flux with airport station location on the table, Washington Post, June 30, 2011

By Ann E. Marimow, Published: June 30

Federal transportation officials floated a plan Thursday to shrink the cost of the Metrorail extension to Loudoun County by building an aboveground station at Dulles International Airport and transferring responsibility for parts of the project to local governments.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has been mediating discussions between Metro project officials and regional leaders for the past month in an attempt to reach a consensus. . . 

 This is the first article I have seen in which the concerns of Dulles Toll Road commuters--who face $20 tolls by 2040 according to MWAA--is being considered as part of the general allocation of the Phase 2 costs.  Besides the Dulles station location, other ideas on the table include:

• Transferring the cost of the Rt. 28 station to Fairfax County--a shift (not a savings) of about $136 million.
• Fairfax and Loudoun counties building the five parking garages to shift $235 million (although I understood that Fairfax had long ago agreed to build--and pay for--a second garage at Herndon-Monroe and, of course, it's paying for the Wiehle/Comstock garage.)

Apparently as part of the above, US DOT is considering lending money to the counties to ease the interest cost of that construction, and not to MWAA.

It is still far too soon to tell how all this will be resolved, but apparently some progress is being made in (a) cutting costs and (b) shifting them away from DTR commuters.