The Dulles Rail Phase II disaster

Posted by: Bob Bruhns ()

Date: June 26, 2013 07:02AM

The Dulles Rail Phase II disaster
Beware when the powers-that-be create an artificial emergency that supposedly requires panic, binary decisions, on huge, bloated projects.
http://herndon.patch.com/groups/bob-bruhnss-blog/p/bp--the-dulles-rail-phase-ii-disaster

Dulles Rail Phase II is an absolute disaster.

The main blunders have to do with the Dulles airport rail station. The below-ground plan is inexcusably overpriced. But the above-ground plan is no good either. And our leaders are trying to get us to make a bad binary decision - EITHER the MWAA above-ground plan, OR the MWAA below-ground plan, in a mad rush, crying that the sky is falling, we have to act NOW, etc, etc, etc. But the emergency is artificial, deliberately drummed-up drama to panic you into approving a very bad plan indeed.

Bloated numbers and a smokescreen fight about the Dulles Airport rail station were used to confuse the issue. Almost everybody has fallen for the trick - causing them to stampede to approve the overpriced and badly designed above-ground plan that shouldn't be approved either. This distraction was orchestrated to trick you into approving a very bad, and needlessly expensive plan.

The cost-difference figures you hear are simply wrong. Use your head. What should an underground station have? Well it needs an underground tunnel and an underground building. What should that cost? Well, the Tysons Corner tunnel, just nder 1/2 mile in length, recently cost $85 million. And a 7-level, million square foot underground parking garage in Reston is costing $93.3 million. Put together, those cost $178.3 million. Then consider that the above-ground station would not be needed. What would that have cost? Well, the Route 28 above-ground station was listed as costing $136 million. So subtract $136 million from $178.3 million and you get $42.3 million. Of course there may be additional connection and associated costs, but how did the DOT come up with a $562 million difference figure? It simply makes no sense. It seems that when somebody wants to push the underground plan, the number shrinks, and when somebody wants to push the above-ground plan, the number swells. I don't think the MWAA and DOT difference numbers have any credibility at all.

But the worst part of the bad design at the Dulles airport has little to do with an above or below ground station. The design should have been a dead-end spur from a main track on Route 28 to the air terminal, whether above or below ground. Instead, the plan they are pushing, with their artificial emergency, is a very expensive loop.

BOTH Dulles airport rail station designs are massively flawed disasters. Cut the cost by fixing the fundamental design, before applying ridiculous costs to the tolls, to county and state taxes, and to federal taxes in America. The counties are straining to close budget gaps, we have known for years that Virginia is in no condition to waste money, and if there is one thing that the budget battle in Washington has shown us, it is that America already can not deal with its unbelievable budget deficit. Funding overpriced boondoggles like Dulles Rail is exactly the sort of thing that makes our situation worse every day.

Our leaders would have us approve the very expensive above-ground loop, and they want you to fall for their silly act, and agree in mad haste, because they are telling us that the sky is falling.

They totally bungled that - so, what else did they bungle? Use your heads, people! Stop the madness!

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