Pre-construction work for the new Silver Line adjacent to Route 123 has a visible presence now: vegetation on the northern side of the road will be cleared in order to make way for construction trailers and the relocation of utility lines. For those who pined for a tunnel running the complete span of the new Metrorail line through Tysons Corner, however, it’s just another blow to their vision.
So forgive the members of TysonsTunnel.org for masking resignation with desperation, telling the Washington Post that, quote, “they would prefer no rail at all to a set of soaring tracks crisscrossing the area”.
Back when the prospects of a Metrorail expansion to Dulles were murkier, the Tunnelers had reason to be optimistic. Their vision of transit-oriented development taking over the pavement kingdom of Tysons was considered, at the least, a potentially legitimate idea. Nowadays, many fewer are paying attention — especially since, as Ryan Avent explains it, the only way an underground proposal would be reconsidered is if the whole project caves and re-starts from scratch.
The Post paints a bleak picture of the most recent Tunneler assembly: scattered individuals armed with inflammatory propaganda, hoping to influence decisions that have for all intents already been made. Every political channel has been closed to the group, from the Federal Transit Administration to the Virginia legislature to the Duller Dulles Corridor Rail Association. And it seems now that the complete tunnel concept is closed, too.
Given all the positives that might stem from rail through Tysons, the urban planner or transit enthusiast who would scrap the good for the perfect would be a strident voice indeed. So it’s disheartening to see an organization with the resources that the Tunnelers assembled turn from a player in the political debate to a coalition of the shrill. But until they start working on smart development involving the elevated rails — something like Chicago’s efforts to use El stations as developmental anchors, for example — these Tunnelers might as well bury their heads in the ground.
Photo by Pixilista.
