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Getting
From Point T to Point D
In
a testament
to
a rare
bipartisan
effort, Virginia has finally started moving on the
Tysons-to-Dulles Metro
rail project.
The
mid-June reception at the gleaming blue glass
headquarters of Gannett Company, Inc. and USA
Today in
Tysons Corner
featured new energy and a big crowd. Gannett
hosted, as a founder and partner, the Dulles
Corridor Rail Association, the chief private
sector group advocating the extension of Metrorail
through Tysons Corner to Dulles
Airport.
America
Online, ATU Local 689, Capital One, CSC, Dominion
Resources, Lafarge, Metropolitan Washington
Airports Authority, Northrup Grumman and co-chairs
Delegates Kenneth R. Plum, D-Reston, and Vincent
F. Callahan, Jr. R-McLean, give the association
board very strong roots in
Northern Virginia
and not an insignificant amount of clout at
various levels of government.
Karen
Rae, director of the Virginia Department of Rail
and Public Transportation, was looking forward to
a rare moment of transportation triumph at
Gannett. But there she was, stuck on a plane
hundreds of miles away with summer storms in
between her and the team that finally was making
the Dulles corridor rail project come alive.
Where, she had to ask, was the justice that the
Old Testament’s Amos says should “roll down
like waters?”
For
six years or more, the realities of extending
Metrorail to Dulles Airport had been battered by
storms, legal, financial and political, not unlike
those Rae was stuck trying to avoid. As she would
point out in a July letter to The
Washington Post, studies of the Dulles
corridor date back 40 years. More than 200
meetings had been held on issues. A full
examination of all alternatives, including bus
rapid transit and doing nothing, were done before
any decisions on Metrorail as the preferred
alternative.
Meanwhile,
a lot of people had joined her in asking how many
more hurdles before the powers that be
conclusively would accept Metrorail as the most
effective means of providing better access,
mobility, capacity and connectivity for the
region? What was The
Washington Post, a bastion of support for mass
transit, doing editorializing that the project
should “Proceed with Caution?” Is this what
Job felt like?
The
federal government had agreed in principle to
finance 50 percent of the project, but budget
funds were short, particularly for the start of
new transit projects. Fairfax County had approved
plans for a special taxing district for commercial
landowners in the Dulles corridor to provide 25
percent of costs for Phase I, but the western part
of the corridor had to come to its own decision on
Phase II. And the Commonwealth already had
designated increased tolls on vehicles using the
Dulles Toll Road as its 25 percent share.
Still,
these were just plans, “faith unaccompanied by
works,” as U.S. Representative Frank R. Wolf,
R-10th, later would comment from his
perspective as a ranking member of the
Appropriations Committee of the U.S. House of
Representatives. A legacy of suspicion and
distrust had built up around all transportation
projects, including Rail to Dulles, fueled by
years of carping and criticism and the surprising
ability of public boards, councils, legislatures
and executive agencies to make contradictory and
confounding decisions. The frustrations seemed to
lend themselves to Biblical references –
wandering in the wilderness, lean years, fat
years, lions in the budget den, the parting of the
red ink.
By
June 10th, however, the Federal Transit
Administration suddenly steadied itself and
announced the approval of Director Rae’s request
to begin preliminary engineering from
Metrorail’s West Falls Church Station through
Tysons Corner to Wiehle Avenue in Reston. On June
11th Rae led Virginia officials in
signing a contract with Dulles Transit Partners
under Virginia’s 1995 Public Private partnership
Transportation Act to conduct the preliminary
engineering. Now June 15th arrived, the
first public moment of triumph was underway and
Rae couldn’t get there.
Fast-forward
to July 22nd, a hot summer morning that
made the tent on the upper parking level of the
Tysons Galleria shopping center even more welcome.
Virginia Secretary of Transportation Whittington
Clement introduced Fairfax County Board of
Supervisors Chairman Gerald Connolly, D-At Large,
then Representative Thomas M. Davis, R-11th, James
P. Moran (D-8th) and Wolf. Gov. Mark R. Warner
spoke for the entire crowd when he noted with
relief and joy that “we’re moving out of the
gate on this long-awaited and much-needed
congestion relief for the region’s commuters.”
The
occasion was the official signing of the $58.9
million grant agreement between the Federal
Transit Authority and the Virginia Department of
Rail and Public Transportation to fund preliminary
engineering as the first stage in the design of
the Metrorail extension 11 miles from West Falls
Church to Reston. The word was given, well, cash.
Federal
Transit Authority Administrator Jennifer Dorn
called Karen Rae forward to join her at the
podium. Together they signed the agreement and
handed it to Gov. Warner. That Karen Rae’s day
in the sun occurred more comfortably in the shade
was just fine. At least for a morning, connecting
Point T – Tysons Corner, Northern Virginia’s
downtown – and Point D – Dulles Airport and
Loudoun County – proved more important than Rs
and Ds in an increasingly charged period of
national politics.
The
grant also funds the final environmental impact
statement for the entire 23-mile extension to
Dulles Airport and onto Loudoun County. Funding
for the grant comes from over $160 million
provided by the U.S. Congress for the project thus
far, a fact that brought high praise for
Congressman Wolf, in particular, from every
speaker.
For
the record, at the end of the 15-month preliminary
engineering stage, Director Rae is looking forward
to negotiating an agreement for final design and
construction with Dulles Transit Partners, a
partnership of Bechtel Infrastructure and
Washington Group International, and making that
celebratory reception. October-November 2005 will
be a time of increasingly charged Virginia
politics, of courses, the time of election of a
new governor of the Commonwealth. Ts and Ds again
will have to be more important than Rs and Ds if
Northern Virginia and Karen Rae are to get to the
promised land.
--
July 26, 2004
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