All of the hand-wringing on both sides of the Loudoun County’s involvement in the Silver Line is premature at best, and misguided at worst, as the project’s financial plan and its affect on toll road rates have yet to be released.  But once those figures are released and we all have time to digest them, the cost to Loudoun County must be balanced against the following points.

1.    For the past 12 years, Loudoun County has based its land use and transportation planning, as well as its economic planning, on the premise that rail would be built to Rt. 772.  During that period, a number of employers have located in the county in the expectation that there will be rail.

2.    Loudoun County should assess ridership projections against its projected land uses.  The Federal Transit Administration based their past ridership projections on the land use that existed at the time of their study.  The only new developments included were already permitted or under construction. This produced a much lower ridership projection, obviously, than the reality projected by the County’s Comprehensive Plan.

3.    If the rail project isn’t built into Loudoun, then Loudoun commuters likely will find themselves paying the tolls without the benefit of a rail option. The Silver Line stakeholders are going through a major exercise to try and ensure that the funding plan does not put an excessive burden on the toll road users. Let’s hope they are successful.

4.    Regarding operating costs, rail to Loudoun would require Loudoun to become part of the WMATA compact and therefore responsible for a portion of MWATA’s subsidy, and that’s a serious issue.  When the Washington Airports Task Force produced the blueprint which launched the rail some 15 years ago, we envisioned that the Silver Line, because it serves a wealthy area, could be structured to break even and would generate revenue from the passenger stream by letting concessions at stations for such services as convenience stores, dry cleaners, day care and so on.  As the Silver Line constitutes an approximately 20% expansion of the entire system and the WMATA structure has been overhauled, Loudoun County may well want to consider discussing the whole issue of operating costs and subsidies with the new WMATA.

We believe from everything we’ve seen over the life of this project, that Loudoun citizens in 10 to 20 years time would bitterly regret a decision now to pull out.  Those who oppose the project today will most likely always oppose it.  It is critical that we understand the implications for Loudoun citizens and their county economy long-term before the County Supervisors make what surely will be the most important decision made by the County in our lifetime.

Leo Schefer
President
Washington Airports Task Force

The WATF is an independent, public-private sector, non-profit leadership organization that works to ensure that the aviation services, related infrastructure, policies and knowledge, are in place to position our region for prosperity by sustaining Washington Reagan National Airport and optimizing the expansion of Washington Dulles International Airport.

Leo J. Schefer

Dulles, VA