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Metro General Manager John B. Catoe Jr. says transit officials fear the Dulles rail project will be hurt by Bush administration efforts to re-channel funding elsewhere. |
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
WASHINGTON
--Transit industry leaders suspect a Bush administration bias against public transportation is the reason a much-anticipated extension of Washington's Metrorail system has run into unexpected roadblocks.Federal Transit Administrator James S. Simpson recently informed Virginia officials that the project to extend the rail system to Dulles International Airport, outside Washington, was unlikely to qualify for $900 million in federal funding. The entire $5 billion package would collapse without the federal money.
"I think the industry had collective disappointment in this decision," said William W. Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association.
Simpson cited several reasons the funding is unlikely, the project's high cost chief among them. He also noted the need for extensive repairs to Metro's existing infrastructure--repairs the agency doesn't know how it will pay for.
Virginia officials said the pessimistic prognosis took them by surprise because they previously were told the project was on track for approval.
The fate of the extension was a hot topic of conversation at a recent conference of the APTA, said Millar and Metro General Manager John Catoe.
DULLES RAIL PROJECT'S TROUBLES SURPRISE some
Millar said that over the last few years, the Bush administration has been eliminating projects from the funding pipeline. But people in the industry were surprised to see it happen to a major project in the Washington area, he said.
"There was a huge concern that the Dulles issue is not unique to this region, that this is an effort on the part of the administration to re-channel funding to other directions," Catoe said.
Simpson denied the charge. "What this administration is all about is being practical in making investments and not using delusion and illusion to push a mega-project through," he said in an interview.
A list of grants under the Federal Transit Administration's New Starts program, which provides support for local projects, shows that since President Bush took office, the FTA contributed $8.9 billion to 22 projects covering a total of 283 miles.
That compares to $6.2 billion spent on 150 miles of transit during the first seven years of Bill Clinton's presidency, according to the list, which was provided by Simpson's office. The number of projects was also 22.
Additional grants worth $3 billion were made during Clinton's final year in office.
MANY PROJECTS WERE ALREADY IN FUND PIPELINE
But Millar said that comparison means little, because projects take years to reach the final funding stage. Many of the projects funded by Bush began the process under Clinton, and there was less in the pipeline when Clinton took office following 12 years of Republican administrations, he said.
Catoe drew a connection between the news about the Dulles project and opinions expressed last month by Transportation Secretary Mary Peters.
Peters was part of a special commission that spent two years studying the nation's surface transportation needs. She and two other members dissented from recommendations adopted by the other nine commissioners that called for higher gasoline taxes to help fix roads and bridges and expand public transit, highways and rail.
Peters called instead for sole reliance on tolls and private investment, saying that would avoid sending millions of dollars of new tax revenue to Washington that could end up as congressional pork.
Vukan R. Vuchic, a professor of transportation engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, said that taken together, Peters' dissent and the FTA's statements on the Dulles project were "two disasters."
With federal funding for the Dulles rail project now in doubt, Catoe held out hope that after Bush's second term ends next year, the next administration might be more willing to come through.
