The following is from an interview in the Sun Gazette with Dranesville District (Fairfax County) supervisor, John Foust.
Do you still favor competitive bidding and a tunnel for the Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project, or are those options pretty much done?I don't know whether they're done or not, but I'm still in favor of them. I think we all want rail to Dulles. They're spending an awful lot of money to pursue a project that still hasn't demonstrated that it qualifies for funding. What we're doing is designing something that might not get implemented. We should be using this time to competitively bid and get the costs under control, and have a fair hearing and evaluation for the tunnel option.
Thank you, John! Now, why is this concept -- build Metro to Dulles, but make sure it's competitively bid and try as hard as possible to get a tunnel in there -- so difficult for so many others to understand?
To Dowd and others: Those of us in the Northern Virginia delegation who signed the letter to the FTA did so to keep the prospect of federal funding alive for a desperately needed rail connection to Dulles and without commenting one way or another on the alignment of rail through Tysons. As we said at the time, the potential loss of a $900 million federal share jeopardized the participation of our special tax district partners - a $400 million investment - as well. The federal share is now still a possibility but by no means a certainty given the hurdles remaining. As I have said, we must now focus on cost containment procedures to make sure our tax payers are not responsible for any overruns that may occur. By bidding out subcontracted jobs and auditing the project as we proceed, that cost containment becomes more achievable. In the opinion of many, we are likely to have much more success as "watch dogs" instead of trying to change the alignment of the project at this point. We need rail to Dulles, and we need to move forward. We who championed the tunnel right up to Secretary Peters' recent announcement should now fight to ensure our citizens are not paying extra for a project that will require additional design mitigation and substantial land use revision to make it palatable to those of us who live in or near the corridor. Margi
From Metro Center to Dulles will take riders through 21 stops?
When combined with the waits in the TSA lines, Metro travelers will need to leave 12 hours or more before their departure time to assure themselves that they won't miss their flight.
Since food and drink are not allowed on Metro, they better eat a full meal before they leave.
When the NYC Metro was built in the 1890's, it's designers realized that the factory workers of the lower east side wouldn't move to the Bronx or Queens unless there were express trains to take them back to the factories in Manhattan. Thus, parallel tracks were part of that system from the beginning: one for express trains and other for locals.
The current "Silver Line" design permanently precludes express trains and condemns this line to failure in providing access to Dulles from downtown. Whether providing rail access to Tysons from Reston, Herndon and Ashburn is enough to justify the expense imposed on the toll payers and taxpayers of Fairfax is yet to be demonstrated.