Posts about Silver Line

The high tolls are a direct result of the state's failure to invest its own money in this critical transportation project, placing the burden fully and unfairly on northern Virginians. Instead of making the case to the Loudoun Board of Supervisors for the importance of moving forward, McDonnell's administration is making it easier for them to vote no, endangering the whole project.

The Governor just threatened again, via a budget amendment, to withhold the state's meager $150 million contribution to Phase 2 if his new appointees to MWAA were not seated immediately instead of on July 1st. Fortunately, the Virginia House of Delegates voted yesterday to kill the amendment, stopping this latest threat.

One of the main points of disagreement between the McDonnell administration and MWAA has been Project Labor Agreements (PLAs). These have been successful on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge and Dulles Rail Phase 1 projects.

PLAs are not just about regulating union labor and wage rates for workers. They also require unions to help secure an adequate supply of skilled trades for these massive projects, and to ensure effective coordination among the dozens of trades and subcontractors, both union and non-union, for smoothly functioning, safe, and timely construction. The preference for PLAs in the bidding process seems a reasonable solution. We should move forward with these provisions.

The governor says he is greatly concerned that Virginia doesn't have a majority of seats on the MWAA governing board, which controls Dulles and Reagan National Airports, as well as the Dulles Toll Road and the Silver Line project. But this regional agency has effectively served our region for a long time, completing major and complex expansions of both airports.

It is true, however, MWAA could be much more transparent and accountable, as the IG report notes. The Coalition for Smarter Growth was among the first to raise this issue in 2006 when the Kaine administration proposed handing control of the project over to MWAA. Pressure from the governor, our federal and state legislators, and local elected officials has resulted in key reforms at MWAA. These reforms should continue, but so should the Silver Line.

The attacks on MWAA may have more to do with securing state control of future toll road revenues, for use on road projects like the Northern Virginia Outer Beltway and other rural highways, than about fixing the governance of MWAA.

We can't know that for sure, but it's very plausible given the administration's power grab at the Virginia Port Authority. After reorganizing the port authority's board to ensure control from Richmond, the administration pressed new board members to approve diverting $250 million to Route 460, a rural highway between Hampton Roads and Petersburg that Hampton Roads leaders say is not their top priority. A similar effort by the governor to secure a controlling majority on MWAA in order to do the same thing would not work to the best long-term interests of Northern Virginians.

McDonnell says that he could not even contemplate funding another $300 million for Dulles rail without raiding other projects throughout the state. But is he setting the right priorities? What money might actually be available?

The governor is proposing to spend over $750 million on the Route 460 project. Another $244 million is being earmarked to the controversial Charlottesville western bypass, a road that appears to be ineffective and a waste of money. Millions are going to the Coalfields Expressway to support mountaintop removal in an area with little traffic.

Even accounting for these projects, there may be another $400 million available in the $1.5 billion Public-Private Transportation Act fund. Setting different priorities would free up hundreds of millions more.

It's hard to respond to the governor's argument that Northern Virginia is getting its fair share of the state's funding without seeing the full picture. A clearer accounting of complicated funding flows would be helpful for both the public and legislators. Certainly, making significant investments in addressing the transportation needs of Northern Virginia should be a priority given the importance of the region to the state's economy.

Perhaps symbolic of the administration's priorities, Virginia Deputy Secretary of Transportation David Tyerar made two recent trips from Richmond to Leesburg to appear before the Loudoun Board of Supervisors. He didn't go to make the case for Dulles Rail. Rather, he spoke to promote the Outer Beltway.

The governor and secretary revived planning for the Outer Beltway, added it as a new Corridor of Statewide Significance, and are exploring the route for yet another public-private partnership. Yet this highway would do little to help massively congested corridors like I-66, Route 50, and Route 7. The contrast between the obstacles put before Dulles Rail by the McDonnell administration and their full-court press for the Outer Beltway couldn't be starker.

If the Silver Line's phase 2 fails, it will be on Governor McDonnell's watch. He should lead the way to compromises that will allow the project to move forward, and focus more of the state's transportation resources on this economically critical project.

In late 2010, New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie rejected $6 billion in funds from Federal and other non-state sources to build a new commuter rail tunnel under the Hudson River into Manhattan. The project would have provided tens of thousands of jobs now and in the future, created over $100 million of business activity per year, increased the value of homes nearby, created huge amounts of tax revenues for the State of New Jersey, and eased the commute for hundreds of thousands people who have to get in to Manhattan from Northern Jersey every day.

And the independent Government Accountability Office confirmed these lost benefits just last month in a well-researched and detailed report.

Despite those cold, hard facts and the fact that New Jersey would have been on the hook for only about 14 percent of the project's total cost, the New Jersey Governor killed the project. The Governor veiled his anti-transit actions in the ideology of austerity—itself a harmful ideology in a time of recession when government's focus should have been directed toward increasing employment instead of cutting deficits.

A closer look at the facts reveals that Governor Christie falsely inflated the short-term economic cost of the project in his mission to kill a well-funded, well-planned, and hugely beneficial public transit project. Now that his assertions about funding have been largely debunked, we can see what anti-transit forces have attempted to hide: an ideological opposition to transit itself.

Simply put, there is a vocal movement that rejects the notion that public transit has or should have a place in our development, let alone a place of priority. And some politicians are responding to that movement.

Now, anti-transit forces in Virginia are also pursuing a similar veiled anti-transit ideology as they attempt to kill phase 2 of the Metro Rail extension to Dulles Airport.

The project is the largest expansion of Metro rail lines in the D.C. Metropolitan Area since Metro was built in the 1970s. Like the Hudson River tunnel in New Jersey, the Silver Line would move thousands of people a day by rail through one of the most congested areas in the United States. It would (and has already) created jobs and other economic benefits. The project is being managed by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority and is currently in Phase I, which extends the rail from East Falls Church through Tysons Corner.

Phase I has been an unqualified success. It is scheduled to be completed on time and it is on budget. The project also has an exemplary safety record—incredibly important for a project being performed as commuters zoom around nearby and underneath. Because the first phase was so successful, the Airports Authority decided to largely replicate the model it is used on Phase I to implement Phase II of the rail extension. It voted to approve a bidding process and Governor McDonnell gave his blessing to that process.

Then anti-transit forces stepped in and Governor McDonnell changed his mind, threatening to withhold funding unless the Airports Authority changed the requirement that the biggest contractors on Phase II use the same union hiring halls that were used to staff Phase I—i.e., the same workforce that is successfully completing Phase I.

To avoid a fight, the Airports Authority was flexible and it changed the bidding to accommodate Governor McDonnell's request, implementing a system that would give bidders using the same hiring halls from Phase I extra points in the competition for the contract but not requiring their use.

Apparently this hasn't appeased Governor McDonnell's anti-transit donors because the Governor is now threatening to kill the project unless the preference system is dropped entirely.

Anti-transit forces in Virginia have now created a full-blown crisis on account of their ideological opposition to using union labor on any project—another dangerous ideological position designed to destroy key progressive constituencies. Headlines now scream that Phase II of the project is "in doubt."

Transit advocates should be wary of the stated ideological reasons given for killing these projects because they veil another ideology that fundamentally opposes the expansion of public transit.

The Virginia and New Jersey cases—not to mention House Republican's continuing efforts to kill high-speed rail in the U.S. Congress—provide evidence of such an ideological anti-transit war. Instead of seeking practical solutions to improve public transit in neglected or over-trafficked areas, anti-transit politicians have sought to kill rail projects on other questionable grounds. And they have done so even where those projects have minimal costs and maximum benefits for the regions in which they operate.

Anti-transit ideologues veil their opposition to transit projects with other ideological memes that incite their base—in Virginia it's union boogey men, in New Jersey it's misstatements about "debt" and "overspending." These ideological memes are as dangerous to progressive values as the anti-transit ideologies they mask.

But make no mistake, if the anti-transit ideologues had any predisposition to implement real transit solutions, they would cast aside those ideological battles in favor of the compromises and heavy subsidies they have been offered to move the transit projects forward.

Their absolute refusal to do so in favor of other pet ideological battles—"hostage-taking" as Pearlstein calls it—indicates a broader ideological opposition to the transit projects themselves. If robust public transit is to become a priority in this region (and everywhere), transit advocates and their allies must expose and defeat these ideologies.

These names are short, can be used in the names of developments or buildings in the area, and will create a memorable name for the area around the station.

What did you pick?

Fairfax County proposes to address this problem by adding 4 pedestrian bridges. But a better solution would be to deck over these roads wherever possible, and then stitch together the neighborhood fragments with air rights development.

Imagine grand pedestrian plazas, lined with a grid of narrow local roads and high-rises with ground-floor retail, all elevated above the main roads below carrying vehicular traffic from the Dulles Toll Road and I-495. Decks could transform barriers into true urban places. Roads that waste vast amounts of land could be converted to more productive use.

An air rights development similar in concept is advancing in the District of Columbia, and is an example of how this idea can work. The Return to L'Enfant plan (PDF) will deck three blocks of I-395 in downtown DC with new buildings.

The High Street deck over I-670 in Columbus, OH is a successful example of an air-rights development that was implemented a few years ago, although it is smaller in scale.

Route 123

The best opportunity for a deck may be along Route 123, where it passes the Tysons Corner Center and Tysons Galleria malls.

By my estimate, it would cost $120 million more to develop a deck with air rights buildings on top than it would cost to produce those same buildings under normal circumstances.

In order to make this profitable, Fairfax would have to give developers some significant concessions. Developers may need the right to build larger, more profitable buildings in order to cover the high initial costs. Parking requirements will have to be changed, since below-grade on-site parking will be impossible.

The sale of 10 acres of land to developers would likely yield somewhere around $60 million, based on previous land sales nearby. Fairfax could rebate some or all of this money to the developer to help cover the cost of the deck. Once the development is in place, the county would receive tens of millions of dollars per year in added tax revenue, which could help underwrite a TIF for a period of time to help fund the deck as well.

Even if the county gives up much of the direct revenue, doing this would still reap tremendous rewards. Route 123 would be a unified urban corridor. The most valuable land closest to the Metro station would be the center of the community, rather than a gaping hole. The local street grid would continue across the highway, and pedestrians would not be faced with a dangerous and daunting crossing.

This concept could provide an urban heart to the functional center of Tysons Corner, and provide Fairfax County with a strong revenue stream in the long term. There are many challenges, but if it can be made to work the payoff could be huge.

Air rights development over the Dulles Toll Road has been discussed for the Silver Line's future Reston station for over 10 years. Although a study found that the proposal was infeasible in the current economy, it may make sense in the future. If it's on the table in Reston, it makes sense to consider it in Tysons Corner, too.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the idea was perceived as heresy, both by Dan Malouff and MWAA board members. Mame Reiley, one board member, said, "I just don't think that's what we labored for... it is not rail to Dulles."

Board members raised concerns that the federal government might delay the program because the board was "starting over." And indeed the proposal appears to have been dismissed by the authority board as unacceptable.

But such a change could be a reasonable money-saver and may actually improve transit service for both commuters and air travelers. The question is immediately relevant to the Dulles Rail extension, but also equally valid to many cities, as the issue of extending rail networks out towards airports is frequently of concern for transportation planners in major metropolitan areas.

The question of how to reach Dulles by rail has been fraught with controversy since project development began. Originally, the concept was to connect the Metro line to an underground station about 550 feet from the main terminal, but after the project's price tag had exploded past $3 billion, cost-savings became necessary.

The MWAA, which runs Dulles Airport in addition to the Metro extension, eventually agreed in July 2011 to move the stop about 600 feet farther away and to elevate it above the ground. Riders wanting to get off at Dulles will have to make the more than thousand-foot walk from the station to check-in.

Brown's likely stillborn proposal to replace the direct rail link with a people mover reflects the fact that riders are likely to see this connection as inconvenient, especially compared with that at Reagan National Airport, where customers only have to walk about 150 feet between Metro platform and the terminal entrance.

Brown suggested rerouting the Metro line away from the airport (the existing plan is shown in orange below and would be about 4 miles from Route 28 to Route 606), so that it runs directly along the Dulles Greenway (in blue, about 2.5 miles from Route 28 to Route 606). A people mover (also in blue, about 1.5 miles) would connect the Route 28 station to the front of the terminal.

Though customers would have to transfer, they would now get a more direct journey, since it would be far easier to fit in front of the terminal the tracks and station for the people mover than it would have been for the Metro line (and in fact this explains why that latter possibility was never brought up).

This would save a total of $70 million, according to planner estimates, because it would replace about 1.5 miles of very expensive Metro infrastructure (readied for eight-car trains) with much lighter automatic people mover infrastructure, designed for one- or two-car trains.

We know this would save some money. How would this change affect customers?

Riders commuting in to Tyson's Corner, Arlington, or Washington from outer suburban destinations on the end of the rail line west of Dulles would save time: At the 35-mph average speed expected for Silver Line trains,* it will take about 6.9 minutes to get from Route 28 to Route 606 using the current plan. The more direct route proposed by Brown would reduce that journey to 4.3 minutes. That's almost half an hour in saved travel time per week per commuter.

Even better, those using the Silver Line to get to and from the airport might actually save time travelling too.** Though these customers would have to transfer between Dulles Metro and the people mover, if that connection were timed and across the platform (as is quite possible when two automated systems are linked and built at the same time), the time lost would be only two or three minutes.

Meanwhile, once they actually get off at the terminal, the experience of riders taking the people mover would be much superior: Rather than walking 1,150 feet to the terminal, which would take them about 4.8 minutes on average, they would walk something more like 150 feet, which would take them only 0.6 minutes.*** See this back of the envelope comparison:

	Arrive at Rt 28 station	Timed transfer to people mover	Time to Dulles Airport station	Walk to terminal	Total travel time
Existing proposal	0 min	--	2.5 min	4.8 min (or about 3 min with moving walkway)	5.5-7.3 min
People mover proposal	0 min	3 min	2.5 min	0.6 min	6.1 min

Though the use of the people mover raises questions about operating another rail system, it could be maintained with similar vehicles as those already servicing Dulles on the Aerotrain, which connects checked-in passengers to the terminals.

The Washington region would not be alone if it chose to make its airport rail link stop somewhat short of the terminal itself. In Phoenix, the new light rail system was built in coordination with airport officials, who are currently constructing an automated train between the rail station and the terminals. The San Francisco Bay Area is building an airport connector to the Oakland Airport that will link a BART station some miles away to the terminals.

And Miami's new AirportLink Metro Rail project will not actually stop at the airport, but instead at a new central station with transfers to a people mover.

Riders in these regions will not suffer; they may lose a few minutes transferring between trains, but if the connection is short and timed, that pain can be minimized. Avoiding the airport, paradoxically enough, could both save money and improve the situation for riders.

* 35 mph: PlanItMetro projects it will take about 22 minutes to travel the 12.8 miles between Dulles Airport and Tysons 7 Station.

** The only customers would would lose out with this change would be those traveling to and from Dulles from outer-suburban locations.

*** Assuming that people with bags travel at about 4 feet/second, a bit slower than the average walking speed of an elderly person.

Cross-posted at The Transport Politic.

To the MWAA board's credit, they quickly rejected Brown's proposal. As they should have. The main goal of Phase 2 of the Dulles Metro project is to provide service to Dulles Airport. Failing to do so means the project would not meet its main goal.

Cutting so many corners that you don't achieve your goal is not cost savings, it's failure. Far from saving $70 million, by failing to provide Metro service to Dulles Airport Brown's proposal would actually waste billions.

After all, if you're going to force airport riders to transfer onto a shuttle anyway, why not make the transfer at Whiele Avenue, the end station for Phase 1? Why bother building Phase 2 at all? The other Phase 2 stations are all primarily park and rides, and it doesn't make much difference at which station drivers park, so without the connection to Dulles Airport the entire argument for why Phase 2 is necessary in the first place becomes extremely flimsy.

So flimsy that many people would wonder whether the project were worth its $2.8 billion (minus $70 million) price.

The planning history of the Silver Line is replete with compromises. Express tracks to the airport or no express tracks? A subway through Tysons Corner or an elevated line? Airport station at the terminal or a few hundred feet away? At every step of the process, planners have had to weigh the ideal service situation agaist the costs. That's life in the world of transportation planning.

But this is one compromise that absolutely cannot under any circumstances be made. The absolute minimum requirement for a Metro line to Dulles Airport must be that it actually reaches Dulles Airport. Period.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.