A team of contractors is offering to build the first half of Rail to Dulles with a tunnel under Tysons Corner and a price tag about $400 million cheaper than the existing plan.
The defiant and likely doomed $2.23 billion proposal comes on the eve of major decisions for the transit project and represents the latest move in a complex, protracted battle to resurrect the Tysons tunnel idea.
The team includes Dragados, a Madrid-based tunnel construction firm that has made repeated overtures to the commonwealth to build the track under Tysons.
Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine last year dropped the underground route in favor of an unpopular aerial track after federal transit officials warned him that associated delays and price escalation would make the entire project ineligible for federal money.
Officials show no signs of reversing course or considering a new proposal. The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which is taking over the project, already has approved a design-build contract that could bring the price of the initial 11.6 mile-phase to as much as $2.7 billion.
Fairfax supervisors received the new tunnel offer just days before a scheduled vote Monday on approving $400 million in project funding.
“Please make an effort to prevent the biggest travesty that the State of Virginia will have ever undertaken,” William Gallagher of KGP Design Studios wrote in a June 15 letter urging supervisors to make the funding contingent on the construction of a tunnel.
