President Donald Trump said on Dec. 2 that his administration will start the process of reconstructing Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia.
During a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump highlighted his administration’s efforts to rebuild the U.S. air traffic control system, including upgrading copper communication lines to fiber optics and replacing old, analog radar systems with new digital platforms.
That work, according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, is a third of the way complete.
Duffy and Trump expect to finish the project by the end of the president’s term.
“We’re also going to rebuild Dulles Airport, because it’s not a good airport. It should be a great airport, and it’s not a good airport at all,” Trump said. “It was incorrectly designed with a good building. Actually, it’s got a beautiful terminal.”
The president praised Eero Saarinen, the Finnish-American architect who designed the airport’s main terminal.
“Saarinen was the architect, one of the greatest architects in the world at the time, a great architect, and so they have a great building and a bad airport,” Trump added.
“But we’re going to turn that around, and we’re going to make Dulles airport—serving Washington, Virginia, Maryland, etc.—we’re going to make that into something really spectacular. We have an amazing plan for it.”
Pursuant to Trump’s order, Duffy will invite industry experts to submit information that includes “design, finance, and construction concepts, for a new international gateway airport for the National Capital Region.”
“Tourists, world leaders, and CEOs from around the world should not be forced to travel through an inefficient airport when they visit D.C. [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,” Duffy said in a statement.
“We’re engaging the private sector to explore how we can do this cost effectively and at the speed of Trump.”
Dulles Airport, which opened in 1962 and serves more than 23 million travelers every year, is one of three key air hubs that serve the nation’s capital.
It does so along with Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) in Arlington and Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) in Baltimore, Maryland.
The Washington area initially only had Reagan National after it opened in 1941, until Congress passed the Washington Airport Act of 1950 to provide for the construction and maintenance of a “public airport in or in the vicinity of the District of Columbia.”
Dulles would become the first airport in the United States designed for commercial jets when construction work began in 1958.
After opening in 1962, the airport’s Mobile Lounges or “people movers” as they’re commonly called, became a unique feature of Dulles early on.
First used to transport up to 102 passengers between the terminal building and their aircraft, the people movers also ferry passengers between Dulles’s concourses.
Duffy said during the Cabinet meeting that Dulles recently had experienced a crash with its people movers, and that the Transportation Department will announce later on Tuesday a “request for bids” to repair the Mobile Lounges.
