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Dulles Metrorail extension: $5.1 billion. Begin building a gridof streets: $742 million. County leaders must now start asking themselves if a new urban Tysons Corner is truly priceless.

Asked to put a price tag on the myriad improvements that might be needed to create Fairfax County's future downtown, county transportation planners came up with an eye-popping number -- $15 billion over the next 40 years.

However, exclude the cost of the rail line, the funding for which is essentially a done deal, and the operating costs of the new rail line and bus service for the area, and the price tag for new construction is more like $1.5 billion over the next 20 years.

This would fund $373 million worth of widening projects already shown in the county's comprehensive plan, $369 million of additional projects needed to accommodate future growth in Tysons, $742 million to create a new grid of streets and $52 million for expanded bus routes in the area.

"It shouldn't surprise folks. We're planning for a downtown that would be one of the top ten in the country," said Planning Commissioner Walter Alcorn (At-large), chair of the Commission's special Tysons Committee, which is developing a land-use plan for Tysons Corner to accommodate the impending rail stations.

Not every project on the list will necessarily stay on the list, Alcorn said. The commission will be evaluating the road and transit needs and determining when those projects will need to be completed. The results will be included in the Commission's final report to the Board of Supervisors.

"I look forward to hearing more input on the specific recommendations from interested stakeholders," Alcorn said.

One stakeholder, Clark Tyler, said many of the widening projects can be taken off the list. Tyler, who chaired the citizen and business task force that generated the vision for Tysons, said such projects will likely be counterproductive to efforts to get people out of their cars and onto mass transit.

The list includes widening stretches of Route 7 and Route 123 to six and eight lanes and adding a lane to the Outer Loop of the Capital Beltway, after the high-occupancy toll lanes are constructed.

In the later years, the $15 billion transportation staff estimate includes high-dollar projects outside of Tysons, including extending Metro's Orange Line to Centreville. While these are not directly related to Tysons redevelopment, as more people begin to live and work in Tysons Corner, it will be important to improve transit links from all directions, Alcorn said.

"I think it's important to start thinking of Tysons as both a destination location and as a departure location as a downtown," he said.

The report makes no assumptions about how such projects would be paid for, Alcorn said. The rail project itself is a good example of how large projects can be funded creatively, he said.

Tyler also said that looking solely at the costs does not give a complete picture of the return on investment that a bigger, better, pedestrian-friendly Tysons Corner will provide.

"The cost of it is important, but you've got to look at the total picture. What is the cost of keeping people in their cars?" Tyler said. "What isn't on the paper is the cost of not doing it. If you don't develop Tysons in a managed way to make it something nice, all that development is going to go someplace else."