The Lerners and Georgialis group will make billions of dollars off of this public works project; regardless of if its a tunnel or otherwise.  DC builds a billion dollar stadium for the Lerners, and now you want to build them a train.  How about they spend their own darn money for a change.  Or if they want the government to pay for it, they bear the tax increase instead of us middle class folks.  

and you can blame the FTA for it. Their formulas left the project no other alternative. The elected officials of the area and local business owners realize that, while the project is imperfect, it is coming down either to the aerial line or nothing at all. Not building the project and scuttling it is not an option.

I would rather have the tunnel, but I'm also not going to be a purist about it either. The rail line needs to be built. And if it is above ground, so be it.

Jiacinto, since you seem to be very up to date, could you please state in 200 words or less why the rail line needs to be built?  Some of us less informed would like to hear  your answer.

Thanks.

There should be a rail line to Dulles Airport. It was planned for decades.  

Frank Wolfe arranged for a BRT mass transit system to serve Tysons Corner and Dulles Airport in 1998.  80% of the cost would have been paid by the feds.  It was a done deal.  The Fairfax County BOS rejected this proposal.  Had they not done this, we would have mass transit in Tysons today.  It could have been followed by heavy rail if so warranted.

Why did they reject this sweetheart deal?  Maybe it was too cost effective.  If you are a major contractor like Bechtel, would you prefer a $100 million construction contract or a $5 billion contract?  And maybe the public would have found BRT to be so efficient that they would have nixed the much more expensive heavy rail.

Money speaks.  Big business controls our elected officials, both Democrat and Republican.  That's why heavy rail, the absolutely most expensive mass transit option, is the current "locally preferred alternative".

And that's why we won't have a comprehensive mass transit solution for Northern Virginia in my lifetime.

BRT is a joke. People aren't going to ride glorified buses.  

Rail ridership: 317,290  
Bus ridership: 236,222

That's a lot of people for "nobody."

Source:  WMATA

that the bus figures probably include the poor in DC than actual suburban riders in Fairfax county.  

Yeah, you're exactly right.  The same "people" you talked about below (ultra rich developers and Tysons land owners to be specific) are not going to ride any buses.  Ever.  Your "people" ride in limos.

However, as Lowell points out, real people do ride buses.  And if an even better system (BRT) was introduced those numbers would only go up.

geared toward isn't going to abandon their cars to ride a glorified bus. Buses have a negative stigma.  

a no-bid contract to the company that was responsible for the "Big Dig" fiasco in Boston. There's no common sense in doing a  massive project like this the wrong way, simply because the process SUPPOSEDLY prevents us from doing it the right way.  There's no common sense in failing to heed the wishes of 80% of the population that wants a tunnel.  There's no common sense in doing all this in secret.  Etc., etc. etc.

""I think all of us would say, 'Of course we like the tunnel,' " said Jonathan Cherner, who, with his father and brother, owns Cherner Automotive Group on Route 7 in the heart of Tysons. "But the Federal Transit Administration came back and said, 'If you want to do a major engineering change to the project, you got to go to the back of the line and start over.' That process is almost a 10-year process. We don't need mass transit in 20 years. We needed mass transit 20 years ago"

People aren't going to risk the project being scuttled completely. They don't want that. That's another flaw of the tunnel group. They failed to convince people that the project would not die completely if they bidded the tunnel.  

You actually BELIEVE that?  Wow.  All Congress has to do is pass a bill saying "Build Metro to Dulles WITH a Tunnel and you get funding, without a tunnel and you don't."  That would pretty much be the end of that story.  The question is, why are people like Frank Wolf standing in the way of this, and why are we listening to the ridiculous excuses the Wolfs of the world throw out there?  Quite simply, this is NOT a binary choice between either a tunnel or nothing.  That's just scare tactics being used by people who have a lot to gain from rail to Dulles and who could give a crap whether it's done right or not.

All those "people" are the landowners who have billions of dollars to gain in real estate transactions.  Pretty much everyone quoted in the article (who is in favor of the rail) was one of those people.   Where are the regular people - those who would actually ride the train?  

Sure, if you do a generic poll most people would probably agree that a train to the airport is a great idea.  Hell, I think it's great if that's how you present it.  But drag the ugly reality into it (no-bid contract, fat cats making billions off of a tax payer funded government project, a continuing escalation of costs, a pedestrian unfriendly above ground implementation, a traffic nightmare for years during construction, and a questionable (at best) impact on commuting) and I'll bet you'll see a big change in regular people's opinions.  

So when you say people aren't going to risk the project, let's be clear on which "people" you mean - the already wealthy land owners who will significantly increase their wealth, provided something, anything, is built.