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Reston's Delegate to Virginia House of Reps
Decision Time For Silver Line's Airport Station
The Wiehle Avenue Station on the Silver Line is taking shape. The major support structures for the station are already in place.
Across the Access and Toll Roads to the north, the transit oriented development Reston Station is underway with an excavation about the volume of FedEx Field to house a parking facility for more than 2,300 cars and bicycles, as well as a bus port and new streets to support the station.
Topping off this joint venture between Comstock Corporation and Fairfax County will be residential, office, and hotel facilities.
West of Wiehle Avenue is the beginning of Phase 2 of the Silver Line. No progress is being made on it because of an inability on the part of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) board to control costs to the satisfaction of its funding partners, every elected official I know, and the federal government.
For a couple of members of the MWAA Board to simply dig in their heels on a design that is not financeable and that has raised serious questions about the Board’s ability to make important decisions has left me and virtually all the persons I have worked with over the years on this project shaking our heads in disbelief.
A list of reductions in cost of over a half-million dollars is readily available, but it has taken the intervention of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation to get MWAA to look at the options.
Central to the discussions of reducing costs of Phase 2 is the location of the rail
station at the Dulles Terminal. Original plans showed a tunnel of a couple miles with a station essentially under the daily parking lot.
Preliminary engineering found that plan to be prohibitively expensive. The MWAA Board considered several other options, including an above-ground station next to the North Garage and a shortened tunnel. The shortened tunnel option was chosen by the board even though it was more than $300 million more expensive than the above-ground station.
Since all other costs associated with Phase 2 had risen over the original guesstimate, it was clear that value engineering would need to be done on the project and savings would have to be identified.
Phase 1 went through a somewhat similar experience when planning for the project was put on hold for consideration of a tunnel under Tysons Corner. That option proved too costly as well. In a perfect world - where costs are not a
consideration an underground system - it would be nice, but in a suburban setting it is neither necessary nor cost justified.
Public officials and members of the press have walked the alternative routes at Dulles and concluded that the above-ground station is safe, accessible, and practical.
Wonderful progress is being made on Phase 1 looking to an arrival date at Wiehle in December, 2013. It’s decision time to move Phase 2 forward to keep a 2016 expected completion date.
Terry Maynard
11:10 am on Thursday, July 14, 2011
With all due respect, this rush to judgment attitude is precisely the reason we're in a five to six billion dollar hole right now, trying to claw our way out. Not eight years ago, the total cost of the Silver Line--Falls Church to Loudoun--was estimated at $2.5 billion.
Now we face at least twice that amount as the estimated cost with toll road users (many of whom can't get to where they need to go on Metro) projected to pay more than half of that cost. Meanwhile, MWAA--which still wants a gold-plated station at Dulles--is contributing four percent to the total cost of the project, less than one-third of the cost of construction at Dulles airport alone. Oh, and WMATA--which will actually collect revenues from the line--is paying nothing.
Does that make sense? Is that a fair and equitable sharing of costs? Is that a wise decision?
If the total cost and cost allocation issues can't be resolved in fair and equitable manner, maybe the Silver Line should end at Tysons Corner. At least people inside the Beltway could access Tysons by train. The line certainly should not end in your community, at Wiehle in Reston, and turn that neighborhood into a massive gridlocked Metro parking lot. Maybe bus rapid transit (BRT) from Tysons outward is a more cost-effective and equitable way to improve public transit use for those who can use it.
Let's make a good decision this time.
Bob Bruhns
5:40 pm on Friday, July 15, 2011
I'm sorry, but any analysis that might have been done under MWAA is suspect, in my view. After a 1/2 mile tunnel in Tysons Corner recently cost $85 million, and the 7-level underground parking garage in Reston is costing $93.3 million (total for tunnel and underground building $178.3 million), how can an underground station at Dulles airport cost $562 million more than an above-ground station? The numbers just don't add up.
Don't fall for the panic and screaming - we heard the same noise in Phase I in 2002 and 2003 when Herndon would not pay for the four stations in Tysons Corner, and guess what - Phase I is happening anyway. Phase II will happen when the costs are actually brought under control. But right now, the numbers don't add up at the Dulles station, it casts doubt on all of Phase II, and we really can't afford to throw away billions of dollars.
Hiding the excessive costs by shoving them onto Fairfax and Loudoun counties is not the way to bring them under control, and borrowing money to overpay for bad Phase II plans is not the way to bring costs under control either. What is needed in Phase II is a full redesign, under competent leadership this time. Much like 2002 and 2003, Chicken Little will be heard screaming that the sky is falling, the project will collapse, etc, etc, etc. Just ignore that, and do the job right this time.