The Federal Transit Administration’s announcement Wednesday that it would tentatively move the Dulles Rail project forward resurrects a plan to triple or even quadruple development in Tysons Corner, promising to reignite a battle over growth and traffic in Fairfax County’s traffic-clogged “downtown.”
The Tysons Corner Land Use Task Force will finish charting out the redevelopment of the area, the backbone of which would be formed by four new Metrorail stops through Tysons, by the end of May, said Chairman Clark Tyler.
Still in question is how much growth the area can accommodate, and whether it has the parks, sewers, services and, most importantly, roads to handle it.
“Much of the infrastructure is going to be a factor of budgets, taxes and policies,” Tyler said. “Not one of those things do we control.”
Critics have charged that Dulles Rail was simply the means to an end for greater building densities — and profits — for a handful of Tysons Corner developers, at the expense of Dulles Toll Road users, who will pay for the largest share of the project’s cost.
The federal government’s reversal “is a tragedy for taxpayers and commuters all over Northern Virginia,” said Sen. Ken Cuccinelli, R-Fairfax, an opponent of Dulles Rail.
“This is going to be an absolute horror,” he said. “There is no transportation benefit to this, this is great for one or three or four big commercial real estate developers in the Tysons Corner area, [not] if you’re any of the other 2 million people that work in Northern Virginia.”
Tyler said he rejected that argument.
“Tysons is the economic engine running the county, and Northern Virginia is the economic engine running the state,” he said. “What do you want to do, let the engine idle?”
