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DOT 27-06
Contact: Brian Turmail, Tel.: (202) 366-4570
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Washington Dulles Gets $200 Million Pledge to Help Build 4th Runway with Letter
of Intent
Signed Today by U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta
Washington Dulles
International Airport got a $200 million pledge from the federal government to
help build a fourth runway today when Secretary of Transportation Norman Y.
Mineta signed a letter of intent to provide funding over the next eleven years
for the project.
“The new runway will reduce flight delays, allow the airport to keep pace with
demand, and ensure safety” Mineta saud. “It will give Washington area travelers
more choices, more convenience and more confidence.”
The new federal funds will help cover the costs of building the runway and
associated taxiways at the airport. The project will provide a third north-south
runway at the airport. Once completed in 2008, it will allow the airport to
handle up to 50 percent more flights per hour during the right conditions,
Mineta said.
He added that the new runway will make it easier for aircraft to land during bad
weather conditions. He said the project also would help reduce flight delays
nationwide. “Making sure the airport can handle more take-offs and landings each
year is the best way to avoid the kind of traffic jams in the sky that cause
delays at airports from Savannah to San Diego and Memphis to Miami.”
The new runway is needed because Dulles is one of the fastest growing airports
in the country, Secretary Mineta said. Noting that traffic at the airport has
grown from twelve million passengers a year in 1996 to over twenty-seven million
in 2005, Mineta said the airport is now among the nation’s busiest.
He said that the airport has been working over the years to keep pace with its
growing passenger load, by expanding its main terminal, adding a new air traffic
control tower and new concourses and building new parking facilities, among
other projects. But he said that “this airport is growing too fast to just
tinker around the edges.”
The Letter of Intent signed by Secretary Mineta and Metropolitan Washington
Airports Authority President James Bennett provides Dulles with a federal
commitment to use Airport Improvement Funds from the Federal Aviation
Administration to help cover part of the $356 million project.
The Secretary's Speech can be found at
http://www.dot.gov/affairs/minetasp022106.htm.
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