Woo: apparently, the DC metro area is going to get the Silver Line to Dulles after all. This is great news--not only do we desperately need more rail capacity, but also, rail to the airport is one of the most obvious slam dunks. No one wants to pay $100 to park their car for a week.
Boo: on the other hand, the line is only going to run to Falls Church. This is the same stupid decision that New York made, running the airport train to Jamaica rather than into Penn Station or Grand Central. No one wants to change trains six times with a week's worth of luggage, either. Plus, the DC metro system desperately needs more central capacity. It's time to bite the damn bullet and build another bridge or tunnel across the Potomac.
A bridge farther north in Maryland to redirect VA-bound traffic away from the 270 Spur would also be very nice.
utterly ridiculous. talk about half-assed. It's as if the people running rail policy in this country think no american has ever experienced what a modern rail system is supposed to do. we are supposed to get excited by this crap solution. i love this country but some things the europeans do rail so much better.
I assume the Silver Line will be funded with federal tax dollars. So should I be happy that my tax dollars are going to build a new mass transit line for you instead of rebuilding the decrepit CTA?
This is the same stupid decision that New York made, running the airport train to Jamaica rather than into Penn Station or Grand Central.
A bird in the hand beats two in the bush.
If New York had decided to build the JFK Airtrain to Penn or Grand Central, there is a very slight possibility that our great-grandchildren might live long enough to ride it.
but also, rail to the airport is one of the most obvious slam dunks. No one wants to pay $100 to park their car for a week.
Yeah, but the Metro system doesn't even have long-term parking at the park and ride stops. I find it completely ridiculous that perhaps the hardest thing about taking the Orange line into DC from the West is unavailability of parking at the Vienna stop. And even though Reagan National is right on the Metro, it's impossible for me to take the Metro to it because I can't leave my car at the Vienna lot for a week either. (Of course, my situation is unusual; living in Centreville, Dulles is about as close to my house as the Vienna stop, so I might as well have someone drop me off at Dulles to save parking.)
Boo: on the other hand, the line is only going to run to Falls Church.
My understanding has been that the Silver Line will branch off the Orange Line at East Falls Church, but that Silver Line trains will go all the way into the central city, on the existing Blue/Orange tracks.
Plus, the DC metro system desperately needs more central capacity. It's time to bite the damn bullet and build another bridge or tunnel across the Potomac.
Central capacity? The DC Metro system desperately needs the "Purple Line" loop line following the Beltway or something like it. No one who lives on the Orange Line in Falls Church or Ballston or Clarendon wants to ride east into the central city only to get a different line and ride back out west to Dulles. No one who lives in Rockville wants to ride around the entire Red Line into the city and back out to go straight east to Greenbelt either.
This is great news--not only do we desperately need more rail capacity, but also, rail to the airport is one of the most obvious slam dunks.
If it were so desperately obvious of a slam dunk, wouldn't the states, DC, and counties be willing to pay for it without federal money? ;)
The problem that remains is that Dulles is really far out there from the center of the city. Far enough (and the Metro slow enough) that it will still be slower than driving the Toll Road for most people.
See e.g., here and here for maps that definitely suggest that while the Silver Line will branch off the Orange Line at East Falls Church, Silver Line trains will go to the central city-- perhaps as far as Stadium-Armory.
Here in Boston, I have to ride 3 of the 4 subway lines to get to Logan Airport. Well, to get within a bus ride of the airport.
Or I can take the Red Line downtown, and take a bus directly to the airport.
I've been told that DOT regulations prevent building subway stations in airports. They don't directly ban it, but apparently make it prohibitively difficult to fund such construction. Hence buses have no problem, since they don't need any special construction.
So is the Silver Line really going all the way to the airport, or just close to it?
Hmm... Maybe the Silver Line is the exception, but is there really any reason to believe that this rail project will be any better than most, which are huge boondogles? The well known problems with rail are that it is very expensive to construct and operate, does not move very many people relative to its expense, quite inflexible in dealing with changes in population and activity location, and usually only useful if you happen to be going between two different places on the rail system. In Manhattan, rail may well be efficient, but it seems like a dubious proposition for Northern Virginia. Not that I don't like to ride on the Metro when I visit Washington!
But Megan, wouldn't this project require - gasp! - taxes? What happened to your Libertarian principles? Do you abandon them when there's a proposal that you can benefit from? In other words, you don't want pay taxes for the benefit of, say, sick old people (they deserve it anyway because of their lifestyle choices, right?) but you're happy to take my tax money to make it easier for you to get to the airport. Or, worse yet, would this be another borrow-and-spend project to be paid for by our grandchildren - or by the Chinese when the US government goes belly-up in a sea of debt and defaults on its obligations?
This is the same BS as in Los Angeles with LAX. After a year in Europe, I decided to take the metro rail into downtown from the airport. Big mistake. The fact that the train doesn't go directly to the airport wasn't such a big deal because there is a shuttle. The deal breaker was the fact that the train goes thru a HORRIBLE neighborhood and you have to change trains right at Nickerson Gardens which is probably the worst project in SoCal.
A clue should have been the fact that I was the only traveler using the train from LAX. The other people were employees of the airport commuting home. What a freaking waste because the train was very fast and convenient. I just felt very unsafe and vulnerable and I'm sure that if more travelers were to use this option they would be robbed for sure. A white dude two suitcases and a laptop cas makes for a fat target.
This is the same BS as in Los Angeles with LAX. After a year in Europe, I decided to take the metro rail into downtown from the airport. Big mistake. The fact that the train doesn't go directly to the airport wasn't such a big deal because there is a shuttle. The deal breaker was the fact that the train goes thru a HORRIBLE neighborhood and you have to change trains right at Nickerson Gardens which is probably the worst project in SoCal.
If I'm not mistaken, the Metro's Green Line was never intended to serve the airport. It was built primarily to serve workers at aircraft plants and other major industries in the area. Declining employment levels in the aerospace industry between the time the line was in its planning stages and when it actually opened meant that it's always been somewhat underused.
Bob Hawkins wrote:
I'm not sure what the regulations are, but Minnesota's Hiawatha Line tunnels under the runways of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport and has an underground stop for the main terminal. There's also an aboveground stop at the smaller Humphrey terminal.
The Minneapolis lrt has underground stations at both terminals at the airport, and it received a lot of federal money, so I don't think building subway stations at airports is something the DOT discourages.
Commuter and light rail can make sense in some situations, epecially when existing right of ways are employed, or when density is high enough. People do tend to ignore the myriad of ways in which the automobile has ben subsidized, which makes cost comparisons difficult. I tend to believe, however, that if the taxpayer is going to build a rail line, the taxpayer is unwise to shave 20% off the cost, and thus make the line terribly less efficient.
Mpls/St.Paul is an interesting case study, and one that I'm familiar with because I get there on business, and need to keep current on local political and economic developments. Their first rail line seemed of dubious worth to me. It runs from downtown Minneapolis, passing under the airport at about the nine mile mark, and then terminating at the Mall of America, at about 12 miles. I think the total cost ended up running north of 1.1 billion dollars, which even though ridership has far exceeded projections, seems damned expensive, and might have been better accomplished via dedicated bus lanes with stops that had rail-like amenities.
Now, they are working on a commuter rail line which will roughly parallel I-94 northwest about 40 miles, from downtown Minneapolis. This is using an existing freight rail line, and I think the total cost is going to be in the ball park of about 400 million. That seems like a bargain, given the congestion on I-94.
Next up is a light rail line between downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul, through the University of Minnesota, a commuter school with 40,000-plus students. Unfotunately, I've read that in order to shave a couple hundred million off the cost, the trains will be above ground only, instead of what was originally proposed, a tunnel under the University. Having spent some time in that area, it seems to me that trying to save money by running trains on the roads there will create such a mess that it calls into question the entire value of the project. In addition, University Avenue between Minneapolis and St. Paul, after having experienced some blight for a couple of decades, has rebounded somewhat with lots of small thriving businesses, and having access to their businesses blocked for an extended period as rail ines are built is surely going to drive more than few under. On the whole, I think there is some doubt as to the value of the line, as currently designed.
Meanwhile, there are plans for a lrt line from downtown Minneapolis to the southwest suburbs, mostly emloying an existing right of way, which means the costs will be manageable and costruction not too disruptive. I think all of these types of projects need close examination on a case by case basis, but people all too frequently bring their preconceived notions to the table, which precludes such a thing.
Yeah, Ned, you're right, the smaller terminal at the Minneapolis airport has an above ground stop. I've only gone in that direction from the main terminal once or twice.
I fail to see the need for the silver line. I've taken the 5A metro bus to Dullen from Rosslyn plenty of times -- no big deal. I believe there is also a bus that runs to Dulles from the East Falls Church metro.
Where is the cost/benefit analysis? Well, I guess these things are always a lot more attractive when someone else -- in this case the feds -- are shelling out.
"It's time to bite the damn bullet and build another bridge or tunnel across the Potomac."
Yeah, well, good luck with that part too. They were talking about replacing the Woodrow Wilson when I moved here in 1981: more than a quarter century later, they're still fiddling with it. Heck, it's taken the better part of a decade to replace the Monroe Street Bridge in Alexandria!
Rail transit makes little sense in the vast majority of urban areas. Buses may not be as sexy, but they generally make far more sense. See Cato's recent Policy Analysis on the issue.
What ticks me off is the fact that urban planners don't pre-allocate land for rail/highways as the city grows. This doesn't mean that you have to immediately build - why not just leave strips of park land that you can later build on, without having to go thru the hell of eminent domain?
Then, once you have enough density, you could "harvest" the park land and turn in into transportation corridors.
I'm with Collin here. There's no practical need for a metro line. He mentions the buses, which I can attest to run smoothly and easily from Falls Church.
But there is also the washington flyer express cab service, which will get you to central DC for about $50. It's much cheaper (and easier) than parking your car in the airport lot, so I don't even know why that option was presented.
Between the existing mass transit option and the pricier but very convenient express taxi option, I don't think the cost justifies the benefits.
The silver line would also run in a less populated area, virtually guaranteeing it won't get normal commuters.
So far, only Phase 1 of the project has been designed and approved, which extends Metro to Tyson's Corner. Phase 2, the extension the to Dulles, hasn't finished being designed yet. Tyson's Corner is a very busy and congested business and retail area, so terminating Phase 1 here makes a lot of sense.
I suspect Phase 2 will be delayed a long time, or perhaps never constructed. According to the Final Environmental Impact Statement (2004), the capital cost for Phase 2 will be more (about 25%) than for Phase 1, yet the expected ridership will be be a fraction (about 1/3) that for Phase 1. I wouldn't trust the numbers too much, except that many transit project EIS typically underestimate the cost and overestimate the ridership: the current Phase 1 cost estimate is more than 2.5 times the estimate in the FEIS.
So calling this a Dulles extension is almost a political support-raising name; however, this project is being designed and built by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, so they probably have extra motivation to push for Phase 2; whether they can get Federal funding is a different problem.
(I really would have liked to see a modern BRT system from Fairfax to Dulles, which the Federal Transit Administration had offered to pay 90% of a number of years ago.)
Megan, you failed to mention the serious conditions the Federal Transit Administration placed on the project. Namely, Metro Rail has to come up with at least $700 million for repairs on its existing lines, and the creation of a reserve fund, before it can receive the $900 million in construction funds from the feds.
Metro has no dedicated source of revenue. Its operating funds come from fares and appropriations from the federal, DC, Virginia and Maryland governments. Where is all that new money going to come from? Not the feds. Virginia, Maryland and DC? Only if a miracle takes place. Their budgets are already stretched past the breaking point, and they each have long lists of non-Dulles Rail transportation projects that they need to fund.
What really happened here was the current cast of FTA bureaucrats didn't want to face the political brouhaha for killing the project. The solution? Throw it some more planning money, while attaching conditions that they know will be impossible for Metro to meet. By the time Metro fails to raise the hundreds of millions that the FTA insists it find, a new administration will have taken over, so it will be their job to take the heat for finally pulling the plug on the project.
I worked on part of the JFK Airtrain project, and the reason it could not be extended to Penn or Grand Central stations had far more to do with the competing authorities involved than an explicit 'decision' by the city of NY.
Airtrain was built and operated by the Port Authority of NY and NJ, and they could not and would not encroach on the 'turf' of the NYCT for all kinds of reasons. (Federal funding, union solidarity etc.)
What ticks me off is the fact that urban planners don't pre-allocate land for rail/highways as the city grows. This doesn't mean that you have to immediately build - why not just leave strips of park land that you can later build on, without having to go thru the hell of eminent domain?
Then, once you have enough density, you could "harvest" the park land and turn in into transportation corridors.
Fair enough, but doesn't apply in this case. There actually is a median strip in the middle of the Dulles Toll Road that's been intended for the Metro expansion ever since it was constructed.
Metro has no dedicated source of revenue. Its operating funds come from fares and appropriations from the federal, DC, Virginia and Maryland governments. Where is all that new money going to come from? Not the feds. Virginia, Maryland and DC? Only if a miracle takes place. Their budgets are already stretched past the breaking point, and they each have long lists of non-Dulles Rail transportation projects that they need to fund.
The Dulles Metro project does have a dedicated source of revenue, a special tax district. Not enough to cover all of it, but it is a dedicated source of revenue. Fares are also a dedicated source of revenue in my opinion, but I understand that that phrase is used differently. Northern Virginia locales were willing to have a special tax district for extra road and other transportation projects, including Metro upgrades, though the way that they set it up was ruled unconstitutional in VA. If the people who are going to use the Metro refuse to fund it and choose to pay for roads instead, I hardly see why the feds should massively subsidize it instead. Sure, a subsidy can make sense from the point of view of externalities, but surely the externalities affect the locals in VA, DC, and MD most, and the country outside there much less.