Dulles rail OK is boon for Virginia

Here's a car game to play the next time you are creeping through Northern Virginia's traffic on the way to Dulles International Airport. Scan the panorama of your windshield in search of a place to put an extra 400,000 cars.

That's how many new jobs are expected to come to Fairfax County by 2030, on top of the 600,000 people working there now.

Now add taxis and buses to carry the overflow when the airport's passenger load doubles from the current 25 million a year. Don't forget: The 18,800 people who staff the airport will need reinforcements to handle that growth.

It seems an impossible task, but a glance out the side window reveals an empty right of way some smart people included when they designed the airport access road more than 20 years ago.

Federal, state and local officials have spent decades planning for a rail line through that right of way that could carry 60,000 people daily.

Those plans were nearly flung onto the trash heap in January when staffers from the Federal Transit Administration threatened to recommend against $900 million in aid for the project.

Such a calamity would have stranded Dulles at the center of an expanding morass of metal, fumes and human rage.

Many of the high-tech companies that line the airport road likely would have reconsidered their expansion plans and sent jobs to more accessible offices in other states.

Fortunately, the $5 billion, 23-mile Metrorail extension was resuscitated this past week thanks to the combined leadership of U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, U.S. Sen. John Warner, U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf and Gov. Tim Kaine. They set aside old recriminations, made adjustments to the project and agreed to work more closely together to avoid future misunderstandings.

The project still faces real challenges, including the need for new operating and capital support for Metro. Virginia must be willing to do its part to plug that funding gap.

Absent the Dulles rail line, there is no back-up plan for addressing the region's most critical needs. Federal workers and business executives need easy access to one of the busiest airports in the world. National security requires the heavily populated region to have multiple options during an evacuation.

Controversy was inevitable for what will be one of the most expensive public works projects in U.S. history.

However, failure is unacceptable for what will also be one of the nation's most important transportation and economic development investments.