Rail responsibilities piling up for Fairfax, Fairfax Times, July 15, 2011

FTA chief asks county to fund Route 28, Herndon rail stations

by Kali Schumitz, Staff Writer

The head of the Federal Transit Administration tried Tuesday to persuade skeptical Fairfax County supervisors to accept a new proposal for financing the second phase of the Dulles Metrorail extension.

A proposal backed by U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood would require the county to take on responsibility for building the Route 28 Metrorail station and its parking garage -- as well as the parking garage at the Herndon-Monroe station -- at an estimated cost of $241 million.

Other funding partners wanted to remove the Route 28 station from the project entirely, according to FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff. Shifting the cost solely to Fairfax is a suggested compromise.

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This is becoming more and more worrisome.  Rather than cutting costs, FTA's Rogoff appears to believe that the best thing to do is to move the costs from MWAA (and indirectly Dulles Toll Road users) to Fairfax County (and indirectly to county taxpayers via payments on the ensuing debt).  His argument is that FTA will not give MWAA a low-rate TIFIA loan of $1.7 billion because of MWAA's credit rating and the huge size of the loan.  He appears (and it is not certain) more willing to provide such financing to Fairfax at the lower cost of the the two stations. 

But this raises a serious question of why Fairfax should opens its wallet to replace either or all:

• toll road users, many of whom do not live or work in Fairfax County, or 
• the Town of Herndon, which will be the primary beneficiary of the planned station at Herndon-Monroe (and Herndon is well along in its plans while Fairfax is not), or 
• Loudoun County, which will be the principal beneficiary of the station at Rt. 28.  

 Hunter Mill Supervisor may have had the best comment on this situation:

“It’s great to be the most inviting person at the table, but that seems to be the only role we have played on this project,” Supervisor Catherine Hudgins (D-Hunter Mill) said.

As it has before, however, I expect the Fairfax BOS will end up agreeing to paying everyone's bills. . . and passing the costs on to County residents in higher property tax bills.  The lust for completing this project among the BOS is so great, I suspect it will overwhelm reason about the county's legitimate role in this project.