The $4.5 billion Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project, Virginia’s largest-ever public works project, is a mass transit management disaster unfolding before our eyes. It’s a case study in high-level political influence being employed to raise real estate values. It’s never been competitively bid. One of the private contractors picked to build it has a long history of cost overruns and shoddy work. The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), which recently took over the project, is unaccountable to the public and arrogantly refuses to answer Freedom of Information requests.

As if all this were not bad enough, Examiner reporter William Flook recently discovered another conflict of interest in a project replete with them. MWAA paid Carter & Burgess, a supposedly independent Texas consulting firm, $200,000 to review a tunnel study done by three engineering firms for TysonsTunnel.org. The study claimed digging under Tysons Corner is both feasible and cost-effective. C&B dismissed the TysonsTunnel.org study, saying it left out critical information.