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 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

But what of the Macaroni Grill? Reston's Fake Downtown to continue paying onerous developer fees

As they face less and less demand for their awesome particleboard McMansions with 2-story foyers in soulless subdivisions with names like Pointe Hunte Preserve, Virginia homebuilders have been lobbying heavily in the statehouse to get something called "impact fees," which basically let them all but stop paying for the new schools, roads and flashing red traffic lights needed to serve said wonderful particleboard subdivisions. When that didn't go over so well, they offered up a compromise, making Reston's Fake Downtown and Tysons Tegucigalpa sacrifical lambs.

By exempting Tysons Corner and part of the Reston Town Center from the so-called impact fees, the development industry was trying to placate Fairfax County, which opposes the bill along with Loudoun and Prince William counties. Tysons and Reston, which are slated for urban-style redevelopment projects, would remain under the current system, which would allow county officials to negotiate contributions, called proffers, from developers.

But the change was not sufficient to win over Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D), who called it a last-minute attempt to garner support before the Tuesday deadline.

Swell. But what does all this mean to folks like you and me?

In addition, association officials said, it would stabilize the market and slow the double-digit percentage increases in housing values.

Right. Because we're all concerned about the double-digit increases in our property values right now. Thanks, Selfless Homebuilders!

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: 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.

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).

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.

A quasi-urban hellhole divided against itself cannot stand

All that clapping seems to be making a difference. Just days after Tysons Corner grassroot groupsdevelopers announced they would sue the federal government to keep their Paris-like urban streetscapes, complete with strolling troubadors and mimes, free from unsightly Silver Line elevated tracks, other Tysons developers are jumping ship:

The consortium, called Tysons Tomorrow, will include as many as 20 landowners poised to develop a new city of high-rises around the four Metro stops planned for Tysons. The emergence of the group, which held its first meeting last week, is also intended to weaken the coalition that has staged a heavily financed, year-long effort to build a tunnel under Tysons that would bury the rail tracks. Plans now call for an aerial track, and the effort to alter that plan has been blamed for jeopardizing approval of the 23-mile line.

"I think all of us would say, 'Of course we like the tunnel,' " said Jonathan Cherner, who, with his father and brother, owns Cherner Automotive Group on Route 7 in the heart of Tysons. "But the Federal Transit Administration came back and said, 'If you want to do a major engineering change to the project, you got to go to the back of the line and start over.' That process is almost a 10-year process. We don't need mass transit in 20 years. We needed mass transit 20 years ago."

When a car salesman starts making the most sense, something's rotten in the state of Tysons. Also, that awesome lawsuit? Apparently, not so awesome:

On Wednesday, the day after the suit was filed, the sole business serving as plaintiff, Ratner Cos., withdrew. And WestGroup, a developer that has contributed more than $3 million to TysonsTunnel.org, issued a statement disavowing any role in the lawsuit.

WestGroup's plans to redevelop property in Tysons depend heavily on a tunnel, and the company continues to display large banners with pro-tunnel messages on its commercial properties. But it is not interested in abandoning the entire rail line in pursuit of that goal, spokesman Mark Lowham said.

Oh, snap!

Clap even louder!

Looks like we spoke too soon yesterday. As construction was slated to begin on Metro's awesome combustible Silver Line, the Under-not-Over crowd is suing the feds to stop the project, arguing that they didn't give enough consideration to the tunnel option.

The hugely grassroots Tysons Tunnel movement -- that coincidentally was bankrolled by Tysons developers -- was coincidentally joined in the suit by the Ratner Cos., a --you guessed it! -- Tysons developer.

The 30-page complaint asks the court to "enjoin the defendants from taking final actions, granting any final approvals, or acting on any application for the project to enter Final Design or for Full Funding Grant Agreement or awarding or allocating any federal funds." Such an injunction would further delay the rail project, further jeopardizing its chances for federal dollars.

"They've had an entire year, we've asked our political leaders to intervene, and so far the political process has failed us," said Monett, who added that he believes there is enough public support for Dulles rail that it can survive further delay.

Sure it will! For the record, the idea of building elevated rails through a quasi-urban area strikes us as a bit batty and we'd love to see the Silver Line underground. But we'd also like to see the Silver Line built before we're confined to battery-powered Rascals that couldn't negotiate Metro's escalators, on the off day that they're actually running. With the inevitable delays the lawsuit will bring, we're officially moving the over/under on the Silver Line's completion to 2037. If anyone wants to wager on that, our grandkids would be happy to collect.

The grassroots groupdeveloper is arguing the above-ground tracks will harm it financially. Because, you know, they'd be an eyesore, spoiling the pristine view of the current soul-sucking blight of architecturally questionable midrise buildings, Bed Baths 'N Beyonds, and never-ending gridlock.

Come to think of it, could we just put Tysons in a tunnel and keep the tracks above ground?

Metro's Silver Line: You like it! You really like it!

People really, really love the idea of Metro's awesome planned Silver Line, according to a survey commissioned by project backers. But here's the funny part:

Respondents claiming familiarity with the project were also, on average, familiar with some of the more controversial issues regarding the project — competitive bidding process and tunnel or elevated track through Tysons Corner — but not to the point they could explain it to others.

This huge, divisive issue was reportedly one of the reasons the Feds were leery to green-light the project. Guess the "Under, not Over" crowd, funded by big developers in the Tysons area, didn't actually represent a huge public groundswell of support -- they just represented the narrow interests of the aforementioned developers. Who'd have thunk it?

Meanwhile, construction on the Silver Line may well start soon, even in the absence of minor logistical details, like funding.

Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project has announced they will begin initial construction in a few weeks, despite the fact that $900 million in crucial federal still hasn’t come through.

Keep clapping!

One of the important steps is utility relocation in Tysons Corner. Gas lines, electricity, water and more must be removed from underneath Route 7. Most of the work will occur in the service roads, which will eventually be shut down and have a sidewalk put in their place. The work starts at the intersection of 7 and 123, and will head west, and then turn around.

That'll teach those developers to kvetch about a few minor concrete pylons and train stations! Personally, we can't wait until we can go for a leisurely evening stroll down those awesome new sidewalks, taking in the crisp, refreshing aroma of greenhouse gases from the perpetually gridlocked Rt. 7 and the smoke from track fires on the elevated Silver Line as we make our way from the Olive Garden to the Bed Bath & Beyond.

Allegedly, we'll know whether that $900 million will be earmarked for the Silver Line by year's end, or if it'll go to some other equally worthy project.

Clap louder, kids! Clap louder!