Posted on 09/23/2010 9:37:57 PM PDT by george76
The second part of Metrorail's extension from Falls Church to Dulles International Airport and Loudoun County could cost as much as $1.3 billion more than original estimates, which may mean higher rates for people who use the Dulles Toll Road.
The new estimate was provided Wednesday to members of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which is overseeing construction. The first phase is costing $2.75 billion, the authority said. Early estimates had placed costs of the second phase in the same range. The new price range increases the cost by at least $690 million and potentially twice as much.
The plan to extend Metro's rail service deep into Northern Virginia was first developed in 2002 by state and airports officials...The second phase of the project, covering 11 1/2 miles and six stations, does not have federal funding. It is expected to be completed by December 2016. Toll road funds are expected to cover nearly 53 percent of the entire project's costs.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Metro is heavy rail. It’s basically a system of electric commuter trains that go back and forth through the DC area.
So most of the people who use this greater DC train system are Federal workers and workers for businesses that lobby the Feds, contract to the Feds, cater to the Feds, wine and dine the Feds or kiss their arse in some other way. The train riders are all tax eaters, some directly and some indirectly. Those trains would be ghost trains if the DC tax spigot was cut off to half the current flow
Not exactly. Metro is the DC-area subway system. They really have needed this extension for going on thirty years now, but they’ve waited far too long to build it, until the areas they’re going through are so built up that they costs have skyrocketed. There has been absolutely explosive growth along the VA 267 corridor between Dulles and I-495 since the early 1980s and the traffic out there is absolutely brutal. I lived out in Herndon in the late ‘80s and it was awful then, I can’t imagine what it’s like now since the then-rural gaps along 267 have all been filled in with office parks and housing developments.
}:-)4
Did they ever widen I-66 west of the Beltway? I lived up there in the late 1980s in various places around Fairfax County, and remember I-66 being a two-lane parking lot in the mornings and afternoons. Then it crossed the Beltway and became HOV-only (yes, folks, THE ENTIRE INTERSTATE is HOV-restricted between I-495 and Washington during rush hour) and it was empty. Totally empty.
}:-)4
Well is this Silver Line project above or below ground?
Part of each, I think (I don’t live up there any more). They’ve been talking about it for decades, in the late ‘80s I know the more suburban part of it was supposedly going to be run down the center median of the VA 267/Dulles Toll Road. I don’t know if that’s still the plan or not.
}:-)4
Near as I can tell, the “Silver Line” goes underground where it crosses the Beltway.
Yes. Now it's a 4-lane parking lot ...
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