Metro Silver Line: Maybe We Should Keep Clapping, Just In Case

Things are going so awesomely with Metro's Silver Line that Gov. Tim Kaine is coming to Reston today to bask in its reflected, silvery glory.

On Wednesday, June 11, the Dulles Corridor Rail Association (DCRA) will celebrate its 10th anniversary and honor Governor Tim Kaine at a reception hosted by The JPI Companies and the new Westin Reston Heights hotel.

That's right -- the high-density development that's across the freaking highway from the planned Metro station. Assuming it gets built, that is, after some Ron Paul libertarian types brought back to life some inane procedural lawsuit that's been around since roughly 1609, when the Metro tracks were made out of wood and moccasin strings.

A proposed extension of Metrorail to Dulles International Airport, already on precarious footing, was dealt another setback yesterday when the Virginia Supreme Court allowed a lawsuit to go forward challenging plans to use Dulles Toll Road receipts to fund construction.

At issue is whether Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) violated the constitution when he announced plans -- without General Assembly action -- to transfer the state-owned Dulles Toll Road to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which intends to raise tolls and use the proceeds toward the cost of the rail line.

"I would just like for them to take the constitution seriously," said lawyer Patrick M. McSweeney, a former chairman of the state Republican Party, who represented the plaintiffs.

So this dork managed to do what the developers grassroots movement known as Under, Not Over couldn't -- possibly slow this sucker down. But despite losing their deepest pockets, the developer selfless grassroot organizer who bankrolled TysonsTunnel.org to the tune of $3 million, the group is pressing on with its demands that a tunnel plied by glass-bottomed Metro cars be built to preserve Tysons' unspoiled beauty. They recently met for lunch and raised a "couple of thousand dollars" to continue fighting for the cause.

Several tunnel boosters in the room said they would rather see no rail at all than an elevated track through Tysons.

"It will be so unsightly and noisy; it will be such a distraction visually," said Nancy McLeod, a longtime resident of the McLean Hunt neighborhood near Tysons.

Nose, meet face. Have fun cutting yourself off!

Not that it matters. A track fire here, another derailment there, and soon enough Metro won't have enough trains to get out to Arlington, much less the airport.

Metro Silver Line: No Money, No Tunnel, No Problem!

Now that Metro's awesome silver-plated, smoke-filled ride to Reston, Dulles and beyond is absolutely, positively going to happen (unless it doesn't), how are the Under, Not Over folks taking the recent turn of events?

Just swimmingly!

TysonsTunnel.org, the vocal grass-roots organization that has fought to place the proposed Metrorail stations at Tysons Corner underground, is out of money and has lost the support of its primary backer, the developer WestGroup.

Yet the organization will hold a rally May 19 to revive the debate and try to raise money, organizers said.

"TysonsTunnel and its tens of thousands of supporters will not throw in the towel," said the organization's founder, Scott Monett. "Northern Virginians who support TysonsTunnel want the commonwealth to fully explain why competitive bidding is unnecessary. We urge all TysonsTunnel supporters to come out May 19 to show that the fight still isn't over."

Remember how this group is supposedly a huge spontaneous grassroots effort by the tens of people who live in Tysons and consider themselves a part of its vibrant, Olive Garden-intensive lifestyle, as opposed to renting an apartment there for six months or so before fleeing from its soulless, life-destroying core? Well, the group's prime mover -- and it will shock you to learn it's a developer! -- threw in the towel a while back.

Without WestGroup, the future of TysonsTunnel.org is uncertain. The group has spent more than $3 million on marketing and advocacy -- most of it from WestGroup -- and collected more than 10,000 signatures in favor of a tunnel.

Which works out to $300 per signature. Hell, if some grassroots organizer developer wants to send us a check for $300, we'll go to the Bed Bath 'N' Beyond parking lot with an old spoon and start digging the frigging tunnel ourselves.

Metro's Silver Line: Ask a silly question....

Did the federal government's shocking reversal on Metro's awesome Silver Line last week, after declaring the project all but dead back in January and badmouthing anyone even tangentially involved in backing the project except maybe for Earl, the guy who set up all the traffic cones with little flashing lights on top of them in Tysons, have anything to do with politics?

Yes.

This concludes today's installment of Ask a Silly Question About Metro's Silver Line. Next week, we'll tackle another stumper: If you smell smoke on the Metro, are the tracks on fire?

Metro Silver Line: Better keep clapping!

Turns out yesterday's exciting reversal of fortunes for Metro's awesome E-ticket ride to Reston, Dulles, and beyond has, shall we say, a few strings attached.

To receive the entire $900 million, project officials must not allow the cost to escalate further, and they must demonstrate that its schedule, including an optimistic Phase I completion date of 2012, can be met. Toughest of all is a demand that the Metro system's $489 million in unfunded capital repairs be addressed before it takes on operation of a new 23-mile line.

Oh, come on. A power outage here, a track fire there, a pants-optional train or two, and suddenly people are worried that Metro is falling apart and can't handle the extra capacity? Just keep clapping!

Because of the delays this year, the contract will have to be renegotiated, probably at a slightly higher cost, several officials said. And the scheduled 2012 completion date for Phase I, which would extend the new Silver Line from the East Falls Church Metro station in Arlington to Wiehle Avenue in Reston, probably would be moved back at least a year. The second phase, expected to be done in 2015, would extend beyond the airport into Loudoun.

Just keep clapping!

One issue that appears to be permanently resolved is the question of whether a tunnel would replace the project's elevated alignment through Tysons Corner. Tunnel backers had hoped that federal rejection of the project would allow state officials to start over and design a rail line with the tunnel, because it would look better and help promote urban redevelopment in Tysons. But with the project officially in final design, those hopes appear to be over.

Oh, right. The developers grassroots group that has loudly demanded the entire project be blown up unless a tunnel tiled with mosaics depicting the ghostly face of Crystal Koons is built is definitely not clapping.

Following is a statement by TysonsTunnel President Scott A. Monett regarding today’s announcement that the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) will approve $900 million of federal funding for the Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project:

“Tysons Tunnel and its tens of thousands of supporters in Northern Virginia are extremely disappointed about today’s Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project news. Despite this development we still strongly believe it to be in the best interests of Northern Virginia taxpayers that the state competitively bid the Dulles rail project and that it study a tunnel for Tysons Corner. Taking this common-sense approach would assure the residents of this region that they are not overpaying for Metro service to Dulles International Airport.

“The FTA’s stunning and unexpected reversal leaves many unanswered questions regarding what changes have been made to the Dulles rail project to make it eligible for nearly a billion dollars of federal funding."

TysonsTunnel will take time over the coming days to assess today’s developments and the overall situation. We will determine our next steps to affect competitive bidding for this multi-billion dollar public transportation project.

Well, thanks very much, Mr. Buzzkill. Maybe they can revive their awesome nuisance lawsuit, like other selfless civic-minded groups in the region, and we can all sit in traffic for another 40 years.

Metro Silver Line: All that clapping worked!

After basically being left for dead, much like a Metrorail car in an Orange Line tunnel during a track fire, Metro's awesome Silver Line extension through the wonders of Tysons Tegucigalpa, Reston, Dulles and the foreclosed particleboard housing beyond Loudoun County has made a stunning comeback.

Federal transportation officials are planning to approve the proposed 23-mile extension of Metrorail to Dulles International Airport in a letter to Congress today, the officials told local and state authorities yesterday.

Several officials with knowledge of the decision said the $5 billion project had finally met the Federal Transit Administration's standards for cost efficiency, construction and expected ridership. The approval would reverse an opinion from the FTA issued in January that said rail to Dulles did not meet the criteria.

"This is a critical step," one of the officials said. "Two months ago, everybody was writing the project's obituary. Now, thanks to everybody putting their swords away and making this thing work, the project is moving forward again."

Oh, yeah... right. Remember all that hilarious infighting after the initial decision was made, before Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine and U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters became BFFs?

Angry exchanges among local and federal officials included an accusation from the FTA that Virginia and the airports authority had ignored signs that the project had been in trouble for months. Project boosters accused the FTA of seeking to kill the Dulles rail project because of the Bush administration's preference for private investment in public infrastructure. Rumors circulated that the FTA sought to force Virginia to sell the Dulles Toll Road to private entities to finance the rail line, and the FTA continued to say that the project's cost was unacceptably high and expected ridership too low.

Officials with knowledge of the federal decision said Peters was behind the reversal despite objections from the FTA staff, which she oversees. Several sources said they might never know what caused federal regulators to ease up after coming down so hard on the project.

Maybe they just saw all the orange cones strewn across Tysons Tegucigalpa and decided what the hey.

Metro's Silver Line: Insult to Injury

Remember that time Metro was going to build an awesome monorail ride through the wonders of Tysons Tegucigalpa, allowing riders to squint through the smoke from the track fires to get a glimpse of such architectural wonders as the Bed Bath N Beyond and Olive Garden? But then developers grassroots organizers in that fair community decided to spontaneously demand that a tunnel be built, all the better to maintain the area's Paris-like, pedestrian-friendly boulevards? And then they sued, leaving a Tysons car dealer as the person who made the most sense as other Tysons developers jumped ship out of embarrassment? Yeah, that was awesome.

Well, now that awesome lawsuit, which would have stopped Metro construction until a tunnel could be constructed out of millions of tiny, gilded mosaics that depicted the ghostly face of Crystal Koons, has been withdrawn, but not because of some touching, sitcom-like change of heart that happens precisely 24 minutes into the show. Instead, tunnel backers think the whole project is dead as a doornail.

TysonsTunnel.org president Scott Monett says the lawsuit is no longer necessary now that the government appears to be on the verge of denying federal funding for the project.

Funny, the last time we checked in, things were going just hunky dory. Do they know something we don't?

On the bright side, that leaves us with just one nuisance lawsuit to worry about.

Metro Silver Line: Keep Clapping!

Hey, remember that time the Feds were going to cancel funding for Metro's awesome E-ticket ride nonstop through the wonderland of Tysons Tegucigalpa directly to the end of the mile-long, slow as molasses security lines at Dulles? But then after people started whining about the need for mass transit and gas prices and no-bid contracts and tunnels and whatnot, they decided to give Virginia officials another month to file some awesome paperwork in quadruplicate before officially rejecting the plan? Yeah, that was awesome. So March 1 rolled by about... oh, 12 days ago, and no word on the project. Whazzup with that?

Well, apparently Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Margaret Peters are now BFFs! They released a joint statement last week saying everything's hunky-dory, and then went off to see an early show of "Step Up 2 the Streets" or maybe listen to some Bobby Sherman records or something:

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters and Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine said in a joint statement on Friday that they are making progress in efforts to get federal funding for the project.

While Kaine said things were going just peachy, Peters repeated her earlier concerns about the project costing just too darn much because that's what pencil-pushing Washington types love to do, so we'd all better hold off on the Bobby Sherman records.

In the meantime, a report from one of those hippy-dippy public interest groups says that Metro is already saving hundreds of millions of dollars in oil, largely because folks sitting in darkened train tunnels while someone drones on inscrutably about a track fire over the static-filled PA system can't drive until the aforementioned track fires are put out and they're deposited in their exurban kiss-n-ride lot. The usual suspects are hoping this will make the Bush administration appointee change her mind, since if there's one thing that makes their ears prick up in Pavlovian fashion, it's the word "oil."

In the meantime, people inTysons Tegucigalpa are whining about all the growth planned for their cozy, village-like community.

“They're trying to stuff a 10-pound melon in a five-pound sack,” said Ed Stabler, a Vienna resident who works in McLean.

Hmm. Maybe they should have thought about that before spending several years bickering about tunnels vs. monorails.

Metro Silver Line: Maybe Really the End of the Line?

After winning an extension last month to finish up some paperwork and maybe collate it and put it in a nice plastic binder from Staples so it can be filed and ignored by the Federal Transit Authority, time may be running out for Metro's awesome Silver Line extension, which would give commuters an awesome monorail ride through the architectural wonderland of Tysons Tegucigalpa before encountering a track fire somewhere near Wolf Trap and getting disgorged along the median of the Toll Road.

With the end of the month looming, officials for the Dulles Rail Project are busy working with the Federal Transit Authority to get the project approved before the current construction contract expires.

That situation could seem familiar because at the end of January all of those players were in the exact same position, until they agreed to a one-month extension in the contract, giving everyone involved more time to win over the FTA.

Now, that extension is about to expire, and sources close to the process say that the upcoming contract deadline has motivated a more intense effort to get a resolution for the foundering rail project.

The FTA could issue some sort of decision by Friday, but uncertainty over the dispensation of the $900 million in federal dollars needed for the project's current design has made life difficult for those working on the project.

People have said that the constant delays show that the Feds hate mass transit, because they want everyone to drive their polluting H2s everywhere. But they recently funded a new subway line in New York City to the tune of $2 billion -- that's almost enough to pay for all the orange construction signs they're putting up in Tysons Tegucigalpa! What do those New York City elitists have that the Dulles corridor doesn't? Let's consider:

New York City	Dulles corridor
Empire State bldg.	Reston International Center (and Chili's)
United Nations	Herndon: Center of Tolerance
AOL Headquarters	AOL Headquarters
Statue of Liberty	Statue of Robert E. Simon
Broadway	Baron Cameron Avenue
Hot dog vendors	Macaroni Grill

Metro Silver Line: Back on the Bus

As Metro's awesome Silver Line remains in hilarious, sitcom-like limbo, its longtime opponents are bringing back the idea of something faster, cheaper, and at least somewhat less likely to burst into flames on a regular basis: a bus line.

Del. Bob Marshall (R-Leesburg) and Sen. Ken Cuccinelli (R-Centreville) held a press conference Feb. 3 to discuss the possibility of using a bus rapid transit system to supplement or replace the proposed rail project.

“I believe now that the governor should stop pushing this project – I think it’s like pushing air through a corpse – and get serious about bus rapid transit,” Marshall said.

Cuccinelli also expressed concerns over the efficiency of the rail system. He said he opposed the “Dulles rail boondoggle” since 2002. He believes the bus system would benefit more of the region, instead of just having the one rail line.

“The Metro system is crumbling,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense to add to it when we need congestion relief, and all we get from Metro is essentially broken down trains … and we do not need the additional taxes.”

Fine, but if we're going to have an awesome bus system, let's do it right. None of those boring commuter buses -- that's so Montgomery County! Let's get those awesome open-air double decker buses so people can get the full experience of the sights, sounds, and smells of all the wonderful chain eateries in Tysons Tegucigalpa. In fact, instead of worrying about some sort of bus-Metro connector fare, they should just sell hop-on-hop-off tickets like they do on the tour buses downtown, so folks can jump off at the Bed-Bath N Beyond and then get back on, new perfumed bedding in hand, to head over to the awesome CompUSA, or whatever big-box store has taken its place. Which, given the awesome, non-Metro abated traffic, should only take... 30 minutes.

Metro Silver Line: So You're Telling Me There's a Chance

After telling Virginia officials that Metro's awesome proposed Silver Line through Tysons Tegucigalpa, Reston, Dulles and the hinterlands beyond was as dead as a doornail, the Feds have lightened up a bit.

WASHINGTON - The proposed Metrorail extension to Dulles Airport remains unrated in a Federal Transit Administration report, boosting the hopes of the project's supporters.

Backers of the 23-mile extension anticipated that it would receive a failing grade in Tuesday's report because of warnings from federal regulators that the project was unlikely to qualify for $900 million in U.S. funds.

FTA spokesman Wes Irvin said it would have been "unfair" to give Dulles rail a poor rating, The Washington Post reports. He said the report was assembled in the fall as the agency awaited information from Virginia about the project's cost, management and timeline.

To us, Wes sounds a bit like an overwhelmed middle school science teacher bullied by parent calls into not flunking the kids who didn't get their baking soda-fueled volcano science fair projects done on time. That's not totally fair, though, since Metro's tracks actually manage to flame out and smolder on a regular basis. And an "incomplete" is a lot better than an "F," even if it doesn't get federal funds flowing in time to turn Tysons Tegucigalpa into a winter wonderland full of yellow construction cones and indolent construction workers loitering on backhoes.

But there's still hope. Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine is asking the Feds for suggestions. And the business community is still clapping.

"Before, only people with a special axe to grind were engaged," said William D. Lecos, president of the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce. "Now it's a much broader voice."

That broad voice includes Reston businesses.

Reston Hospital Center has found that transferring patients by ambulance is not an option at rush hour. It has increasingly been shuttling patients by helicopter, a safer and faster, yet more expensive, alternative.

Northrop Grumman opened a headquarters in Reston 10 years ago with the expectation that employees would be able to ride Metrorail to work by now, said Bob Waters, vice president of human resources and administration. If employees are no longer willing to make the difficult commute, the company won't be able to expand here, he said.

"If we can't staff big projects locally, we may decide to go to West Virginia," he said. "We do have to look at alternatives."

Makes sense. After all, West Virginia has awesome mass transit.

Metro Silver Line: When all else fails, an online petition will do the trick

That'll show those pesky Feds.

Well hello, Mr. Positive!

Congressman Jim Moran has weighed in on the delicate political calculus holding the fate of Metro's awesome Silver Line in the balance.

"We're not going to get the $900 million in federal funding from this administration," Moran tells WTOP.

Moran blasted the current group at the Federal Transit Administration and the U.S. Department of Transportation Tuesday, saying they are in "no mood" to say yes to the proposed 23-mile Metrorail extension.

"No matter how valiant Gov. (Tim) Kaine's efforts are, I think they are going to bounce off tin ears. I think (the administration) has made a decision probably for both political as well as budgetary reasons to reject this," says Moran.

Thanks, Mr. Sunshine! We can't see any political gain that would come from killing public funding for the Metro, so we'll just keep clapping. And besides, if the feds don't pony up the $900 million to scatter approximately 323,000 orange cones topped with flashing yellow lights throughout the Tysons Tegucigalpa area, Kaine has, as they say in the movies, a plan. Just hike tolls on the Toll Road!

Kaine continued his drumbeat that federal partnership is crucial to the success of the proposed rail line. But he appeared to be trying something new: getting commuters to put pressure on the Federal Transit Administration.

"What the federal share enables us to do is to build this and keep the tolls at a manageable level, which is appropriate for the hundreds of thousands who use this as a commuter route," Kaine said on WTOP's "Ask the Governor" program. "If you take the federal money out, my worry is that the tolls would be exorbitant."

Charges on the Dulles Toll Road have risen to 75 cents at the main plaza and 50 cents at the exits, and they are scheduled to rise further under a plan to finance the rail line. The toll road is operated by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which is also managing the rail project. Part of the authority's agreement with Virginia is to pay for much of the rail line with toll increases.

Kaine said that tolls could go still higher if the federal government declines to grant $900 million for the $5 billion project.

Sounds like a lot of quarters.

This week on a very, very, very special 'Reston Heights': No Metro, No Problem!

The awesome Reston Heights subdivision and its 2,800 Loudoun SUV-attracting parking spaces have been approved by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, who apparently are no longer worried about the fact that it's sited on the opposite side of the highway from the planned Metro station that probably will no longer ever exist again. Unless, of course, it will.

Hudgins said JBG has pledged 12 percent of the residential development to be affordable housing units, a proffer that the company was not compelled to make since the site is not being rezoned.

Art Hill, a nearby resident and vice chairman of the Reston Association's Planning and Zoning Committee, said a chief concern regarding the development remains the sheer size.

“It should be proportional to what's already up there east of the Sheraton, and it's not. It exceeds it by about 300,000 square feet, which is a lot,” he said.

Hill said he anticipates from conversations at P&Z meetings that JBG's plan may change in the coming months now that it has been approved, primarily to include more retail.

More importantly, Hill said JBG will be affected by what several other Reston developments will have to face if the rail project falls through.

“I think a lot of these people are going to have to rethink what they're going to do,” he said.

Yep! For starters, they won't need to build that awesome Metro access across the highway:

Metro Silver Line: Time out!

After last week's wacky, sitcom-like misunderstanding about federal funding for Metro's Silver Line, for which construction has already sort of begun even though no green light was given but that was okay since Gov. Kaine's best friend's sister's cousin's girlfriend had told him it was going to get the green light or whatever but in reality they secretly planned to reject it so Bush administration cronies the Carlyle Group could totally privatize it and build the rails out of depleted uranium exported from Iraq or whatever.... everyone's taking a time out.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters has agreed to a brief "cooling-off" period before making a final decision on whether to fund a rail line to Dulles International Airport, prompting a renewed effort by Virginia political leaders to keep the troubled project alive.

Yay! That's good, especially since the real construction was supposed to start... uh... Friday. Luckily, the contractors are buying into the whole "time-out" concept as well.

The contract to build the rail line has an escalation clause that was set to kick in Friday. The clause would drive up the price, and keep the project from meeting federal standards for cost-effectiveness. But the contractor has agreed to push back that deadline for 30 days.

And the completion date by about, oh, 30 years.

Meanwhile, Post columnist Marc Fisher has come up with, as they say in the movies, a plan, which basically comes down to ditching Big Dig contractor Bechtel, reconsidering buses and light rail, and--oh yeah--actually giving Metro a new dedicated funding source, so it can actually afford to have some really awesome track fires on the new line. That's so crazy, it just might work!

Keep Clapping! (And pay $9.60)

Now that the federal gubmint has all but pulled the plug on Metro's awesome Silver Line because it's inefficient or not sufficiently underground to meet ADA requirements for golems or too likely to catch on fire like the rest of Metro's underfunded, underserviced transit system or whatever, the market has spoken.

Private equity investors are drawing up proposals to partner with Virginia for a rail line to Dulles International Airport as hope fades that the federal government will help fund the 23-mile Metrorail extension.

Robert W. Dove, co-head of the Carlyle Infrastructure Fund, said yesterday that his company is looking at the possibility of investing in a Dulles rail. Carlyle has not contacted Virginia officials but is reviewing the idea internally, Dove said.

Giving tolling power to a private company is of deep concern to some politicians, who worry that rates would rise unacceptably in private hands.

Why think that? It's not like another big infrastructure company with ties to the Bush administration and happens to own the Dulles Greenway recently announced plans to raise tolls to as high as $9.80. And with money to be made for cronies savvy investors, we don't see any reason why the Bush-appointed FTA heads would try to kill public funding for this project.

No, nothing to see here. Move on, please. But now, the really good news about the private Carlyle-branded Silver Line, straight from Dove:

"Metro would run it, but someone would make a payment to us for making it available every day," he said.

Great. The best of both worlds.

So you're saying we still have a chance!

The headline in today's Washington Post pretty much says it all:

Dulles Rail Project All but Dead
"The FTA made it very clear today to the delegation that they are going to say no to this project," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to anger the transit agency.

Now that doesn't sound good. What happened to all that awesome paperwork Virginia officials were going to spend the weekend on?

Simpson said the FTA would not make a final decision on Dulles rail funding until Kaine and the congressional delegation have had a chance to respond to his concerns. The agency's initial promise to render a decision by the end of January is on hold, he said.

Kaine said Virginia officials and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which is managing the project, would address the concerns of Simpson and Peters by Monday. But several project supporters, including state and congressional officials, said privately that it would not be possible to meet all of the federal government's demands.

Well, not with that attitude! Guess it's time to start finding folks to blame for the fact that the next time we want to take a monorail ride through a futuristic urban wonderland like Tysons Corner, we'll have to go to Disneyworld. So where should the pitchfork-wielding crowds go first?

Simpson emphasized his concerns about Metro, likening the Dulles expansion to putting a two-room addition onto a house that is falling down. "First, you have to fix the house," he said later at a news conference. "Metro's operational issues have become really serious over the last several months," he said. "I spent several hours with senior staff at Metro talking about their unfunded needs. They're holding up some of their subway stations with jacks. They're holding other subway stations up with two-by-fours and plywood. I could go on."

So could we. But of course, for some folks, it's time to party like it's... 1989!

One group not disappointed with yesterday's news is the coalition of community activists who have been pushing for a tunnel through the Tysons Corner segment of the project. Project planners instead decided on an elevated track, saying that a tunnel would cost too much and jeopardize federal funds. Tunnel supporters have been pushing for a timeout on the project to give a tunnel more study.

"This is an opportunity for us to make the best of this and see if we can't get the project corrected," said Scott Monett of TysonsTunnel.org. "We can still move Dulles rail forward -- with a tunnel."

Great idea! We'll go grab a spoon and start digging a hole near the Bed Bath N Beyond(tm).

In the meantime, the DC area joins the ranks of some awesome cities.

THE INTERNATIONAL airports in Chicago, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Sydney are served by passenger rail lines. Those in Kampala, Ulan Bator and Tegucigalpa are not. The Bush administration has now, for all intents and purposes, decided that Washington, D.C., belongs forever in the second category and not in the first.

In honor of the selfless developers "community activists" who helped derail this project, we'll heretofore refer to Tysons as Tegucigalpa -- if only Tegucigalpa had an Olive Garden (tm).

Guess we didn't clap loud enough

Federal officials tell Virginia that Metro's shiny new Silver Line wouldn't be prudent!

The head of the Federal Transit Administration, James S. Simpson, outlined his concerns in a letter sent Thursday to Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine. He said the project doesn't appear to be a "prudent investment."

The FTA evaluated the project under the New Starts criteria and considered the risks associated with the project.

According to Simpson's letter, "The sheer number and magnitude of the current project's technical, financial and institutional risks and uncertainties are unprecedented for a candidate New Starts project."

According to New Starts criteria, a project must receive a rating of medium or higher for project justification and local financial commitment. The FTA rated the Dulles Metro project medium-low for both.

That doesn't sound good. But all we need to do is to pull up our bootstraps and get clapping again. Right?

"If this project is not approved, it's dead. There are contracts that expire on Feb. 1. You can't just snap your fingers and start it back up," said Jim Dinegar, of the Greater Washington Board of Trade.

Looks like Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine's got a busy weekend ahead of him:

After meeting for several hours with Simpson, Kaine indicated they need to answer the federal concerns by Monday.

"We have a great sense of confidence in this project and the partners of the project and the fact that we have done what we have been asked to do and met the criteria. But we will see what their written documentation is."

Failing that, the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce has come up with, as they say in the movies, a plan. They're urging people to call the White House and ask Bush to overrule his own Transportation Secretary.

We'll stick to clapping.

Into the Woodshed

A host of state officials are meeting with the Feds today to find out if Metro's awesome Silver Line to Reston, Dulles and the wastelands beyond can be saved.

The $5 billion project needs $900 million in federal money to move forward, but backers say they are alarmed that reservations among Federal Transit Administration officials could scuttle the plan. The FTA is to decide in the next week whether to approve money for the rail line.

The FTA has expressed concerns about everything from the cost of the project to the contractor -- the same folks that brought us the leaky, only occasionally collapsing Big Dig in Boston. But apparently there are other concerns as well:

In phone conversations with the congressional delegation in recent days, Simpson and other FTA officials said a main concern is whether the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has the experience and technical staff to manage the complexities of a 23-mile extension to one of the nation's largest and busiest transit systems, according to the lawmakers' letter.

FTA officials also questioned whether Metro is financially positioned to operate the new line in addition to its existing system. The officials said they wondered whether the Dulles Toll Road, which is operated by the airports authority, can generate enough money to pay for the rail project's second phase from Reston to the airport, which is the current financing plan.

Hmm. Well. Other than the occasional track fire and wardrobe malfunction, we'd say that Metro is right as rain. Fortunately, all that grassroots developer-backed under-not-over nonsense has been squared away, right?

Project backers also say they are worried about continued efforts to put the rail line underground through the Tysons Corner portion of the project and whether that is slowing the approval process. Kaine decided in 2006 to forgo a tunnel despite broad public support because of the risk of adding costs and delays.

But last week, two Northern Virginia officials, state Sen. J. Chapman "Chap" Petersen (D-Fairfax) and Fairfax Supervisor John W. Foust (D-Dranesville), sent letters to the FTA urging a "time-out" so the tunnel idea could be studied.

Great idea! Just keep clapping, kids, or that "time-out" will be spent in perpetual Toll Road gridlock.

Clap much, much, much louder!

Turns out the biggest threat to the awesome, pants-optional Silver Line to Reston, Dulles and the hinterlands beyond isn't grassroot groups developers in Tysons Corner. Nope -- it's the Feds.

Federal officials remain skeptical of the plan to extend Metrorail to Dulles International Airport and might reject it, even though their consultants recently found that the proposal meets requirements for full funding, government and project sources said.

Those meddling, in-your-face, big-government types! Oh, wait.

Officials with the Federal Transit Administration say they are concerned about the price tag and the specter of another Big Dig, the Boston project built by the same contractor in charge of the Dulles rail line, which took years longer and cost millions more than planned, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the negotiations are sensitive. In addition, the agency has been reluctant to promote large-scale transit projects.

Given the Big Dig's track record, we should probably thank our lucky stars that the Over, Not Under option prevailed. Fortunately, Silver Line supporters are on top of this problem. Right?

News that the rail plan is still at risk has surprised its backers, who said they thought the FTA was satisfied that the project's cost, ridership estimates, contract details and management met agency criteria. A consultant for the FTA, Hill International of Philadelphia, recently submitted two draft reports that sign off on a host of technical details, said sources who have spoken with the consultant.

Numerous sources close to the project -- in congressional offices, the airports authority and state government -- say their optimism soured in recent days as they began hearing from the FTA and Transportation Department officials.

FTA spokesman Wes Irvin declined to comment on the status of the project yesterday, except to note that a decision, expected at the end of the month, has not been made....

Some say the FTA has long been skeptical of expensive rail projects; in recent years, it has more often championed bus rapid transit projects.

Others point to a long-standing desire in the Transportation Department to move away from public investments in infrastructure. Peters, the transportation secretary, for example, refused to endorse a report published Tuesday by a bipartisan national commission on the future of the nation's transportation system. She instead issued a dissent decrying wasteful spending and the federal government's large share of the investment. She said she favored private investment and more tolling to control congestion.

Great. We've seen the effects of more tolling. And so far, the only private investment involving the Silver Line has been the $3 million ponied up to try and stop it -- and even that proved a pretty crappy investment, given that support for a lawsuit collapsed faster than property values in an exurban subdivision.

Just keep clapping, kids! We'll see you in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Spineless and Pantless: Your Metro Detractors

Work on moving utilities in Tysons Corner has begun in anticipation of Metro's much-ballyhooed Silver Line to Dulles. Which may or may not happen, of course, because of issues with lawsuits, as-of-yet undelivered federal funding, and concerns about marring the awesome aesthetics of Tysons' exquisite combination of endless traffic, low-rise, big-box Bed-Bath-N-Beyond dreck, and mid-rise office buildings that were the architectural answer to the mirrored sunglasses craze of the mid-1980s.

But to hear folks in Tysons tell it, people are already getting out of "Fairfax County's downtown"(tm) faster than boxes of overpriced Crate-N-Barrel(tm) cutlery during a half-off sale.

It is very likely that the Dulles Metrorail extension, the high-occupancy toll lanes on I-495 and the first phase of the massive new Tysons Corner Center will all be under construction at the same time. With so much happening in a small area already renowned for its congestion, it seems likely that business in Tysons Corner will be affected to some extent.

"If I was a business person, I'd be wondering where are my workers living, how tough is it going to be for them to get here?" said Rob Jackson, president of the McLean Citizens Association, a local civic group.

Jackson and sources active in the Reston and Dulles corridor real estate markets say they believe many Tysons companies will choose to move closer to Washington Dulles International Airport, so as not to lose employees to the heightened congestion.

TysonsTunnel.org President Scott Monett cited numbers from a regional real estate database firm that show commercial real estate absorption down by about 60,000 square feet in 2007, and a vacancy rate that has risen to over 9 percent.

Well, we've certainly got the space for them 'round these here parts. But we still don't get why these Tysons folks are whining. They put up with a little dust for a year or 7, and then they'll be able to leave their cars behind and just hop on the Metro whenever they want to go to the Pizzeria Uno at Reston Town Center or other, lesser destinations like downtown DC. Right? Well, maybe not.

Tysons Land Use Task Force Chairman Clark Tyler concedes that a sufficient number of commuters won’t use Dulles Rail unless a “circulator” delivers them to four stations at the base of its monstrous elevated tracks. “Metro by itself won’t do it,” Tyler said. But this “circulator” is nothing more than a bus rapid-transit system, which Dulles Rail opponents have been pushing for years as a better, cheaper alternative to heavy rail.

Fairfax Chamber president and Dulles Rail cheerleader Willam Lecos acknowledges that wealthy landowners who plan to cash in on their proximity to the new Metro stations are balking at paying for the circulator, too. He says “a new funding strategy” (i.e. higher taxes) must be found to pay for a secondary transportation system whose main purpose is to entice Tysons workers to use the first.

We'd better keep clapping. On the bright side, if Metro's detractors are successful in derailing the Silver Line, we won't have to worry about things like this.