The federal government of the United States, which owned and operated Dulles Airport before Congress created the MWAA, built the Dulles Access Road in the 1960s to connect the airport to Washington, D.C. by way of Interstate 66. As the access road was built, the authorities opted to reserve the median of the road for some form of rail transit, and the nearby West Falls Church station was designed so that the line could eventually be extended in this direction. The original 1968 Metrorail plan included an eventual extension to Dulles airport. In 1969, U.S. Senator from Virginia William B. Spong Jr. tried unsuccessfully to have the extension to Dulles be built as part of an early stage of the system rather than having it be built at some unspecified time in the future. A 1971 study of the feasibility of Metrorail running to Dulles estimated that 30,000 people would ride the extension each day.