The Next Stops on the Rail Line to Dulles
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With a single change to wipe out enormous cost escalation [front page, Aug. 29], the Little Dulles Train That Could can get federal funding. Put it back on track to International Drive in Tysons Corner, where public land is available for a station.
It might even be possible to go all the way to Dulles International Airport. With a right of way on the Dulles Access Road, the rail line could be built with available money. Leave to later generations the task of adding a tunnel through Tysons Corner. Magically, problems would disappear: no more traffic jams during construction and no more ridership limitations on federal funding. Let the Little Dulles Train That Could be built.
AUDREY MOORE
Springfield
The writer was on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors from 1972 through 1991, the last four as chairman.
As the overpriced, poorly negotiated and mismanaged Dulles Metrorail project teeters toward possible failure from its own ungainly weight, a witch hunt for responsible parties has begun.
The assertions that tunnel supporters are a leading contributor to the delays plaguing the Metro extension to Dulles International Airport and that my organization, TysonsTunnel.org, is capable "of scuttling the venture" are erroneous ["As Dulles Rail Staggers, Players Share in Blame," Metro, Aug. 29].
No party is more culpable than the Virginia Department of Transportation.
Under that agency's mismanagement, the Metrorail project missed numerous deadlines -- a fact that resonates loudly in two federal reports. These delays are the single greatest contributor to the project's billion-dollar cost increases. And, most tellingly, many of the missed deadlines came before Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) selected an aerial railway and before there was an organized pro-tunnel campaign.
How could tunnel supporters have scuttled the project? Despite overwhelming public support for a tunnel and my organization's best efforts, we have not yet persuaded elected officials to give a tunnel serious consideration. And we never asked any official to kill the project. In fact, my organization strongly supports the Dulles extension but differs on its construction through Tysons Corner.
Let's end this blame game by doing what's right and what Northern Virginians want: competitively bidding this project with the tunnel and aerial options competing side by side to secure the best pricing and a 100 percent fixed-price contract.
SCOTT A. MONETT
President
TysonsTunnel.org
McLean
