Pink Line No More: Metro Confirms Extension Will Be Called Silver Line, If They Can Find The Money To Operate It

Exciting news! The Metro extension to Dulles and the particleboard wastelands beyond, which had put Restonians under the vaguely embarrassing threat of having to ride something called the Light Cherry Blossom Pink Line or something along those lines to their jobs downtown, will now and forever be known as the Silver Line, as God and the Pantone color wheel intended. That is, assuming that Metro can find the money to actually staff and run the trains out to Reston:

Metro is estimating it will cost about $107 million over the next three years to start what it is now officially ready to call the Silver Line.

Much has been made about the nearly $6 billion price tag for building the new 23-mile Metro line. But these additional costs are the first updated glimpse of what it will take to get the line running, including hiring workers to run the trains, clean the stations and fix the escalators....

It's also not clear how Metro will ask local jurisdictions to share the cost of paying the bills associated with the new service. The budget to build the line was divvied up among the communities that will benefit from it. But Loudoun County, for example, does not currently help fund Metro, nor does it have a seat on the Metro board, so new calculations must be made to see how much it should contribute in annual subsidies.

Good luck with that.