Panel Discusses Tysons Segment
Engineering Group Has Closed-Door Meeting on Tunnel Issue

By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 8, 2006

A panel of engineers started meeting behind closed doors yesterday to come up with recommendations for the state as it tries to decide whether to build the Tysons Corner portion of the Metrorail extension to Dulles International Airport below or above ground.

The American Society of Civil Engineers convened the panel at the request of Virginia Transportation Secretary Pierce R. Homer, who will decide whether to go with a tunnel or an elevated track at Tysons.

The contractors hired for the $4 billion project say a tunnel would cost as much as $800 million more than the aboveground plan. Fairfax County officials, Tysons landowners and some Metro officials say that the estimate is overstated and that it would be worth paying a little extra for a tunnel because it would contribute more to the hoped-for transformation of Tysons into an urban-style hub.

Considering the crucial role it is playing, the panel has been somewhat cloaked in shadows: The engineering society and the state did not announce the panel's membership and the fact of its first meeting until after the members convened at Tysons Corner yesterday.

Deputy Transportation Secretary Scott Kasprowicz said the state left it up to the engineering society to decide whether the panel's meetings should be open. "Given the short time frame and the highly technical nature of the work, [the society's] position was that it be conducted in private," he said.

Joan Buhrman, a spokeswoman for the society, said private meetings are the norm for the advisory panels it convenes, such as one that has been advising on Hurricane Katrina reconstruction. "These are not what you'd think of as public meetings. It's more a matter of them being together in one room and having a chance to go over this stuff," she said.

Virginia law requires public bodies supported with public money to open their meetings to the public.

Sitting in on the panel's meetings today and tomorrow are representatives of most of the entities involved in the project, including Fairfax County, Metro and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which is assuming control of the project. The panel is also expected to solicit input from at least some of the major Tysons landowners who are footing part of the project's bill. The panel is to issue its recommendations to Homer in late July.

The panel's chairman is Robert S. O'Neil, a Potomac-based consultant who has worked on the design and construction of many of the country's transit systems, including Metro. Its other members are Brenda Bohlke, a Herndon-based engineer with experience in tunnel design; Young Ho Chang, Fairfax's former director of transportation; Richard Gray, a Pittsburgh-based geology expert; Ray Sandiford, the chief geotechnical engineer for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey; and Richard Tucker, a retired University of Texas engineering professor.

Virginia is under pressure to make a decision quickly. Before the tunnel option arose this year, the project's original schedule called for the state to have its plans to the federal government this summer, with an eye toward getting final approval by the end of the year.