News and notes from Reston (tm).

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

As the Silver Line Turns: Phase 1 Connected, If Not Completed

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Hundreds of years from now, people will remember that magical spot outside of Tysons Corner where the last "trusses," whatever they are, of Phase 1 of the Metro Silver Line were connected today, linking an unending band of concrete, and maybe eventually some rails, all the way from West Falls Church to Reston. Here's the HISTORIC MOMENT, as captured by a Twitter person from WTOP:

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It'll take a lot of Toll Road quarters to pay for that golden spike.

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Union thugs! Oh, wait.

Meanwhile, what else has been going on? The Reston Citizens Association has asked Gov. McDonnell to use the state's $150 million share of the project to pay down the capital costs in an attempt to slow the inevitable toll rate hikes, and now that Loudoun has decided to be part of Phase 2, it's back to the same old, same old in our progressive neighbor to the west, the end.

9 comments:

  1. Hope the Tysons Wal-Mart will sell cheap souvenir t-shirts, or maybe cheap Chinese knock-offs of that giant truss-laying thing for the kids.

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  2. I can appreciate how easy it is to make fun of us out here in Loudoun, but please don't think that Eugene is representative of Loudoun. Many of us are disgusted by him, and would appreciate a little help getting Google to stop accepting money to run his offensive ads on their network.

    Each signature gets you one "make fun of Loudoun credit".

    http://www.change.org/petitions/google-stop-selling-advertising-to-hate-groups-like-public-advocate-of-the-us

    ReplyDelete
  3. I would gladly pay 110% of my top 1% salary in taxes to buy as many golden spikes as possible on the spot market to donate to the RCA if they would just once agree to produce a one page PowerPoint that consisely and simply explains their financial take on anything. I've actually seen Reston Patch readers fall asleep at Starbucks in South Reston struggling to make it past the per usual opening 50 paragraphs of a typical RCA statement.

    The RCA's rambling Reston 20/20 web site, which is filled with IRS Tax Code-equivalent statements about everything from Global Warming to the fierce urgency of creating a Reston license plate, has ironically caused more cases of legal blindness than anything since the Chesapeake Bay meteor strike of 35 million years ago that blinded Reston's dinosaur population (I'm not talking about the dinosaur founders that civilized and tamed Virginia's oldest natural lake...uh...yeah...the natural lake of Lake Anne.)

    Note to RCA: It's ok to come across like a bunch of number crunching bureaucratic nerds with your feverish attention to detail in delving into the Higgs bonson mysteries of public finance. However, it's NOT ok to look like you're having group orgasms doing it. Learn to bullet point. If you learn to bullet point, then you might actually see that more people in Reston will rally to the cause than are members of your Board of Directors. If you can't bullet point, then at least stop slaughtering the last remaining American Chestnut trees at Lake Anne to produce the wood pulp needed to make the paper that's being printed with your exceedingly lengthy statements that are ultimately being crated and shipped off to that same government warehouse that contains the Indian Jones-found Lost Arch of the Covenant.

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  4. MDD, the reason that more people aren't hanging on every word that RCA has to say has nothing do with their terse use of language (well, maybe it does a little); it has to do with the fact that most people understand that the developers are going to do what they want to do and RCA is just a puppet to be manipulated to look like they have community buy-in. What that means is that, where the developers and RCA agree, they claim cooperation, and where they disagree, the developers can come up with a hundred or more ways of going around RCA, the least of which is to either buy another supervisor or to threaten a court suit that would further undermine Reston's ability to determine its own future.

    What the fools, dolts and imbeciles at RCA and 20/20 aren't doing is the only thing possible for Reston to absolutely have the final say in its destiny: become a municipality. Until then, the developers are blowing so much hot air in their direction, which they are confusing for wind and, thus, urinating into it.

    Sigh. If I didn't have a family, whose company I value more than Reston Township, I would organize this venture myself.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Convict--

      You may not have lived in Reston when it occurred a few years ago, but RCA--under then-President Mike Corrigan--led a broad effort to make Reston a "town" like Herndon/Falls Church/Etc, a complex and highly prejudicial process in Virginia. This effort included a number of RCA studies of how, why, and so on. Most importantly, it included gathering a petition with the signatures of more than 3,000 Restonians to stimulate the necessary County & State buy-in for a local referendum on the idea as a first official step in the process.

      In the end, when the RCA Board leadership sat down with our local state officials--Howell and Plum--to seek their support, the two of them literally sat there like statues in stone (or maybe "stoned") silence. They said nothing. Hudgins also said and did nothing to advance the proposal over the more than year-long effort.

      That was the end of the effort...for the time being.

      Delete
  5. I really appreciate the work Reston 2020 has done, crunching numbers none of our elected officials seem to be bothered to. It's only their jobs, after all! Too bad partisan issues, not impartial data about what is best for our communities, now matter most in even local politics.

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  6. Howell, Plum and Hudgins--political hacks that they are-- all have far too much to lose should Reston attempt to become a self-governing, incorporated town.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thomas Paine in the AssJuly 18, 2012 at 7:56 PM

    Howell, Plum, and Hudgins, a.k.a

    Moe, Larry, and Curley

    Since anybody running in Reston with a "D" in front of their name on the ballot is assured of election or re-election, what's the percentage for them in listening to their constituents' concerns or positions?

    "Town? We don't want no stinkin' town."

    God forbid even an independent could be elected to anything around here. The joys of one-party rule.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. TPITA, perhaps somebody else could get elected if they weren't trying so hard to do even less for our community than the "D"s. A good place to start would be for the "R"'s from RoVa to start sending more of our tax dollars back to us, especially in the form of Transportation improvements.

      Delete

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