After some much needed R&R (that’s rest and relaxation, not roads and rails), Transit on Thursday returns to Washington only to find that all hell has broken loose on Metro. The Sliver Line extension to Dulles, looking good when we left, is turning into a first rate debacle, and clouds of smoke seem to be drifting though the tunnels on just about every line.

We can’t turn our backs for even a few seconds, can we?!? What gives?

That’s No Way to Build a Railroad
Up until a few weeks ago, the only question swirling around the proposed Metro extension out to Dulles through Tysons Corner was, “How?”. Officials and residents busied themselves debating whether their coveted project, four decades in the making, would run through Tysons on an elevated track or through a more pedestrian- and developer-friendly underground tunnel. Then the Federal Transit Administration, which had provisionally offered to put up more that $9 billion in funding for the project, issued a warning. “Cut costs or we walk away,” was what their report said in so many words.

So how did this project, seen by many Northern Virginians as crucial to helping stem the increasing traffic in the area and morphing Tysons Corner into a suburban mini-city, suddenly fall out of favor with the feds? Two words: cost-effectiveness.

Photo by christaki