Like a zombie in a low-budget horror flick, the Tysons Tunnel just won’t stay dead. A McLean-based business group, TysonsTunnel.org, has organized an effort to resurrect the already-rejected tunnel option for the Dulles Metro rail project. But doing so requires more than a fancy Web site, a public relations campaign and signatures on a petition.
The fact is, a tunnel option has never been submitted to the federal government. The only Dulles Rail configurations the Federal Transit Administration has ever considered for its New Starts program are the original bus rapid transit project and the overhead tracks Gov. Tim Kaine signed off on in September.
Since the feds will be paying 25 percent of the cost, this was a major oversight by the pro-tunnel people. In addition, Virginia would have to withdraw its current proposal and resubmit the entire Dulles Rail project, in effect starting from scratch. “A major scope change of this type would require that the project be reevaluated for compliance with the New Starts criteria,” an FTA spokesman told The Examiner.
The FTA finalized the grandfathered aerial alignment last month. A 3.5 mile, large-bore tunnel substitution would almost certainly not meet the FTA’s more recent — and stringent — cost-effectiveness standards, making the entire project ineligible for $900 million in federal funding
The Tysons crowd, worried that the value of their property will decline with an unsightly “El” down Route 7, will now spend $3.5 million of their own money for more preliminary engineering in an effort to convince the FTA that a tunnel wouldn’t really cost that much more — even though the state just spent four years and $63 million to conclude otherwise.
But tunnel proponents got one thing right: this massive, totally government-funded heavyrail project must be competitively bid.
