Posts about Silver Line

Passengers arriving or departing by Metro would have to cross the terminal drop-off/pick-up roadways, but would do so at signalized crosswalks. This arrangement would allow the majority of arriving Metro patrons to directly enter the ticketing hall, as those arriving by car currently do. It would also allow most departing passengers to access their train directly from baggage claim.

The platform canopy would be 400' long and would be a scaled down version of the Eero Saarinen designed main terminal building.

The Fare vending machines along with the station manager's kiosk would be located in the terminal building adjacent to the door directly opposite platform entrance(s). There would also be kiosks on the platforms adjacent to the exit/add fare vendors. These would be located at the top of the short ramps up from the roadway to the platforms.

Plan view of my proposal.

The tracks descend to portals between the two roadways on either side of the parking lot in front of the terminal. Roughly 525' into the tunnels the outbound tunnel passes over the inbound tunnel to return to right hand running. The portal along Autopilot Drive remains in the FEIS location. The portal to the east would be north of the Aviation Drive overpass.

The alignment around the curve would be in a shallow open cut hugging a wall along the roadway that exits the airport. The outside of the curve would have an embankment with the security fence at the at track level. The tracks in the cut would ascend to grade in the general area of the FEIS tunnel portal. The profile arrangement around the curve on the approach to the airport is to preserve to the "view shed" from the approaching roadway.

All of the tunnels in my scheme are shallow cut and cover tunnels. The reasoning behind the use of cut and cover tunnels is to keep the depth to a minimum which would reduce the cost of powering the train up the grades from the deeper bored tunnel. The shallow cut and cover tunnels will also place the tunnels above the water table, reducing the cost of the operation of ejector pumping stations.

While having the Metro station as close to the terminal as possible is certainly advantageous, I don't think a 600' walk should be a deal-breaker. Especially if it makes the project cheaper - and therefore more likely to get federal funding.

Other advantages cited by MWAA include proximity to airport offices and the potential for development along Autopilot Drive. The loop through the airport would also be shortened slightly, which could provide a marginal decrease in travel times on the corridor. Although that would be at the expense of increasing travel time from the station to the terminal by 2-3 minutes for passengers boarding or alighting Metro at Dulles.

The Airports Authority will consider the proposal this fall. It is currently being studied by consultants.

The stop at Dulles would be part of the second phase of the Silver Line and is expected to open in 2016. The first phase of the project is currently under construction and will bring Metro to Tysons Corner and Wiehle Avenue around the end of 2013.

First and foremost, Rosslyn is incapable of serving as a terminal. It has two platforms and two tracks. There is no crossover at the station. In fact, any train that went out of service at Rosslyn would have to continue to Foggy Bottom and then enter the crossover just east of that station before turning around. And of course, as was pointed out with regard to the Yellow Line, headways are such that a pocket would be necessary anyway.

The other reason that any train serving Rosslyn must continue toward downtown DC is that it is already taking up one of the "slots" on the Orange/Blue subway. The switch at Rosslyn is capable of handling 26 trains per hour in each direction. If, say, 4 of those slots were given to Blue Line trains going out of service at Rosslyn, that would mean 4 fewer trains making it Downtown, period.

So barring a complete redesign of the station at Rosslyn, anything that makes it that far has to continue on to downtown DC. The first feasible place to turn back a train on the Blue/Orange subway is the pocket just east of Stadium-Armory.

With that in mind, some of you may be wondering whether the Blue Line even needs to go to Rosslyn. It does. Aside from the fact that the ridership shows that there is demand, there is more to Blue Line service through Rosslyn.

It is currently possible to travel from any one of Metro's 86 stations to any of the other 85 by taking no more than 2 trains. That's because every single line intersects every other line. In some cases, this happens twice. That adds redundancy to the system and makes Metro more convenient.

Cutting the Blue Line back to Arlington Cemetery would hurt not only Blue Line riders, but those in the core, too. This is because riders coming from Alexandria and south headed for Rosslyn, Ballston, or Tysons and vice versa are able to make that trip without entering the core. While giving all 26 slots at Rosslyn to the Orange and Silver Lines might seem to reduce crowding, the fact is that riders who currently change from the Orange at Rosslyn to the Blue would have to stay on trains all the way to L'Enfant - exacerbating problems in what is already the most crowded part of the system.

Crowding on the Metro is not going to ease any time soon. There are some steps that can be taken to reduce the current impact and stave off the time when the system runs out of capacity. These strategies include increasing the number of 8-car trains and better balancing of the multiplexed lines. But the only long-term solution will be to build a separated Blue Line, including exclusive platforms at Rosslyn.

The "Blue Line Realignment" — sometimes called the "Brown Line" — would redirect just under half of peak period Blue Line trains to run from Franconia to Greenbelt, crossing the Potomac on the Yellow Line bridge. Metro says they will probably sign the trains as Yellow since they run almost entirely on the Yellow Line route).

This proposal would allow for the addition of 4 more Orange Line trains per hour, which would help to ease overcrowding there. It would also add 4 trains per hour to the 7th Street/Mid-City subway between L'Enfant Plaza and Greenbelt. However, it would reduce the number of Blue Line trains headed for north Arlington and the Farragut Square/Metro Center side of downtown.

The Blue Line's Franconia end would see the same number of trains as it does now, but some of those trains would head for Gallery Place instead of Farragut West. At Largo, existing headways would be maintained by rerouting the "new" Orange Line trains to Largo. The only station which would see reduced service is the little-used station at Arlington Cemetery.

Potential new Metro map showing rerouted trains as Yellow.

This change will affect riders on the southern end of the Blue Line. The diagram below shows how travel times could be affected. Trips toward the Farragut West area would take no more than 6 minutes longer — the additional wait time for a Blue train — but it is possible that the trains that remain on the current route would become much more crowded. Of course, passengers traveling to L'Enfant Plaza would save 9 minutes over the current one-seat ride (via Farragut), and 5 minutes over the transfer-to-Yellow (at Pentagon) ride.

Based on an analysis I conducted a few months ago, we can see an estimate of AM Peak volumes on the rail system. A look at those figures gives us an idea about the breakdown of passengers on the inbound Blue and Orange Lines. If we look at the two segments of track approaching Rosslyn on the Blue and Orange Lines, we can see that about 35% of the riders passing through Rosslyn are coming from the Blue Line, while the remaining 65% are on the Orange Line.

Since about 38% of trains (10 out of 26) are on the Blue Line and 62% are on the Orange Line, loads are probably pretty well balanced. The fact that around a quarter of Orange Line rush hour trains are 8-cars long means that the balance is even more appropriate.

This is probably one reason that Metro has not moved forward with its Blue/Yellow reshuffling proposal. However, once the Silver Line opens, Metro will not have much choice in the matter. In order to get enough Silver and Orange trains through Rosslyn, some Blue Line trains will certainly be rerouted via the Yellow Line bridge. A likely scenario for trains per hour at Rosslyn would be 10 Orange, 10 Silver, and 6 Blue.

On the other hand, It will take time for Silver Line ridership to build, so WMATA may delay any major restructuring until new ridership patterns have established themselves.

Some members pointed out that there's definite debate about whether McDonnell is even legally allowed to withhold this money. As a condition of the federal appropriation, DC, Maryland, and Virginia had to certify that the funding from a "dedicated source" was set aside. McDonnell may be on shaky ground now threatening to take it away after telling Congress the money was there.

As expected, the Board also passed its budget including the very large fare hike that has been discussed previously. The only change was to amend the budget to reduce the cost of SmarTrip cards from $5 to $2.50. The differential between SmarTrip and cash will increase on bus and a new differential is being added on rail, making SmarTrips even more important. However, some lower income riders have a harder time affording the SmarTrip cards.