Trump proposes Dulles makeover

President Trump expressed his dissatisfaction with Washington Dulles International Airport as the U.S. Department of Transportation is now looking for ideas on how to fix it, raising the possibilities of a variety of financing tools.

"It's a terrible airport," said Trump. "It was incorrectly designed with a good building. We're going to make that into something really spectacular."

The comments came during a cabinet meeting and dovetails with a Request for Information draft issued by the DOT on revitalizing what the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority calls the "fastest growing international gateway airport in America."

DOT Secretary Shawn Duffy sees room for improvement. "Tourists,?world leaders, and CEOs?from?around the world should not be forced to travel through an inefficient airport when they visit D.C.," said Duffy.

"IAD (Dulles) needs a complete refresh to assume its proper role as the premier international gateway into the capital of the greatest country in the world. We're engaging the private sector to explore how we can do this cost effectively and at the speed of Trump."

Dulles is about 25 miles west of downtown Washington D.C. It opened in 1962 and was designed by Finnish architect Eero Saarinen. It's major hub for United Airlines serving about 27 million passengers a year.

It's operated by MWAA under a 50-year lease approved by Congress. MWAA also operates Ronald Reagan National Airport and the Dulles Toll Road.

In June MWAA went to market with a successful $714.4 million bond sale which serves as a downpayment on already planned capital improvements.

"The Airports Authority appreciates the administration's interest in making improvements to Washington Dulles International Airport," said MWAA in a statement.

"We want to build on the existing $7 billion capital plan for Dulles, which is underway with a new concourse under construction and expected to open next fall."

The DOT's broad request includes "requesting ideas from interested parties for design proposals, construction concepts, and potential financing plans, including public-private partnership ideas, for completely new terminals and concourses to replace the existing main terminal and satellite concourses."

Funding airline operations, especially air traffic control, typically emerges as a formidable cudgel during budget battles and resulting government shutdowns.

The price for re-configuring a busy international terminal would seem to be out of reach for a Congress currently struggling through a standard appropriations process.

"From the initial announcement, it appears that the cost would likely be several billion dollars, so I find that kind of an outlay to be highly unlikely?and fiscally irresponsible, given the already huge annual federal budget deficits and too-high national debt," said Bob Poole, director of transportation policy for the Reason Foundation.

The Reason Foundation is a libertarian think tank.

P3 proponents typically argue for arrangements that reduces risk on the public finance side of the deal and funds projects with user fee supported bond sales.

"A whole-airport P3 would be a design-build-finance-operate-maintain (DBFOM) long-term lease," said Poole.

"These are fairly common overseas and were first employed on a large scale by Australia around the turn of this century."