Study model of TOD at a future Tysons Corner Metro station.

Sick of the topic yet? BeyondDC isn’t. A couple of updates:

• On Monday, the Post reported that private interests want to build the Dulles Metro in exchange for ownership of the toll road, on which they would raise fares. Reaction from Virginia officials has so far been mixed. Some want the thing built and don’t care how, others are upset about the prospect of higher tolls for drivers, and some smell a rat – US Congressmen Jim Moran (D) and Frank Wolf (R) are on record as believing the Feds struck a back room deal with private investors, and are trying to force Virginia to sell the road. At BeyondDC we think drivers should pay higher tolls anyway, but we are a little suspicious about this back room deal. We want the line built, but we don’t want to reward corruption.
• On Tuesday during an interview on WTOP, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine said that just last week the Federal Transit Administration sent a communication to Congress saying the Dulles project had a “green light”. Said Kaine: “The communication to Congress had been what we had expected, which was the project met the criteria. Why on Jan. 24 (was there) a memo that said the project had a green light? What happened in the last week to change it?” If true, this is more proof that our transportation and urban planning needs were attacked from above for either political or financially crooked reasons, and more proof that the FTA approval process is a sham.

BeyondDC is livid. We read the report of yesterday’s meeting between local officials and the FTA over FTA’s likely eleventh hour rejection of funding for the Silver line, and are simply aghast at the unprofessionalism of the FTA. The issues cited as problems are not last-minute issues; they are opening day concerns that have no place being brought up this late in the process. We refuse to believe FTA officials are this incompetent, so the only remaining explanation is that they are lying to us. Either new instructions have come down from above or the Silver line was never on track for approval in the first place. Either way we deserve to know, and responsible heads deserve to roll.

Tysons Corner has approximately the same amount of office space as downtowns Baltimore, Richmond and Norfolk combined. In rejecting Federal funding for the Silver line, the FTA is not only ensuring that one of this country’s largest and most important economic centers remains totally unserved by rapid transit, it is also torpedoing the most important planning initiative in the region – that of urbanizing Tysons from an incoherent mess of traffic jams and parking lots into a walkable, sustainable downtown.

Blocking Metro access to Tysons is a crime, and BeyondDC wants satisfaction. At the very least the Feds owe us back the $140 million already spent on the project.

When the Federal Transit Administration asked Virginia to split its Dulles Metro project into two phases so funding would be more manageable, Virginia complied. When the FTA bureaucracy made it clear that a Tysons Corner subway would be rejected despite its superior efficiency relative to an el, Virginia complied. When the FTA demanded Virginia trim hundreds of millions of dollars from its budget for the project, Virginia bowed its head and again complied. Through a litany of ever-changing Federal demands over the course of the last decade, Virginia has dutifully tucked its tail and made every change requested of it by the Feds because everyone accepts that a subpar project would be better than no project at all.

And now at the last minute before a funding decision, with every request met, all modifications made, and every local party working under the reasonable notion that clear sailing lay ahead, the FTA has dropped the bomb that they’re still not satisfied. This time complaints regard the contractor and, y’know, well, that FTA just sorta feels kinda uncomfortable with big projects like this.

Wait, really? For serious? Why waste a decade of planning – a decade of taxpayer money – if the project is unapprovable on its face because it’s just too much money for our roads-heavy country to spend on transit? Why yank us around for years just to pull the carpet out at the last second?

If the FTA hopes to salvage any thread of legitimacy here, they’ll need to recognize that it’s far too late to back out for a reason like “it’s just too big”. If that was the case, we needed to know years and years ago, not at the last minute before full funding is expected. Failure to fund the project now will make it clear that the project was never on the books to receive money at all. It will be clear that the Feds hoped continuing demands would cause the Silver line to implode under its own weight and simply go away.

In other words, failure to fund the project now will be proof that the Feds have been pulling one over on us this whole time. That is to say, lying to taxpayers.

Memo to the FTA: We know your job is hard, and we know the Bush administration makes life difficult, but at the very least you owe us a modicum of honesty. What will it take to get the project approved?

BeyondDC is weak. We, like most media covering new streetcar lines, lack the restraint to avoid invoking overused puns. It won’t take much googling to find references to A Streetcar Named Desire in the coverage of just about every American city considering reintroducing trolleys to its transportation mix. And now it’s our turn. BeyondDC wants the Anacostia streetcar. We want it bad, and we want it now. We covet our neighbor’s infrastructure.

We need a taste of what’s to come to hold us over until opening day, currently scheduled for sometime in the next year (the website says Spring 2008; we’re a little pessimistic about that). Photos ought to do the trick. From the manufacturer’s website, photos of the first actual tram vehicle bought and paid for by the District of Columbia:

Update 1/18/2008: After speaking to Ddot on the phone, we’ve learned the anticipated opening date has been pushed to Summer, 2009, almost three years later than originally scheduled. Oh well.

Charlottesville is a great college town. College Park… not so much.

In an attempt to rectify the situation, the University of Maryland is planning East Campus, a transit-oriented town center to be built across Route 1 from the main campus, surrounding a station on the to-be-built Purple line.

The idea is fantastic. The execution is a solid B. To be an A, designers will need to:

1. Figure out how to leap frat row, so the new East Campus town center and the old downtown College Park seem like one continuous space, not two competing nodes.
2. Take great care not to give back-door treatment to Route 1. Route 1 is Main Street, not a highway. If the planned civic plaza on the interior of the East Campus block draws users in and engages the whole district, then cool; mission accomplished. On the other hand, if it takes the center of activity off of Route 1 and puts it somewhere invisible, like at the new downtown Silver Spring, the resulting urbanism will feel inauthentic.
3. Ensure rents aren’t sky high. This market ain’t luxury. College students are broke. Also: high rents mean only chains, and College Park will never compete with the likes of Charlottesville if the eats are Subway, McDonald’s and Dairy Queen.
4. Engage the main campus! If East Campus is to become The Corner, it needs to be fully connected to the adjacent school. The University will need to direct some of its growth to the huge grassy lot currently between East Campus and the usable buildings on the main school.

This project has the potential to be a top example of a newly built town center, but as always, the devil is in the details. Get them wrong and this won’t stand out one bit.

Behold the Series 7000 Metro railcar, due to hit the tracks sometime around 2012. Gone will be the last vestiges of vintage 1970s-era colors – even the exterior brown window stripe will be removed, gloriously showing off old school metal finish from top to bottom. Gone also are the carpets (we can live without) and the poofy chairs (not so sure about that one – BeyondDC likes to sit in the upright fetal position with our knees up against the back of the next seat up). Say hello to LCD information screens, automated announcements, and vintage 1980s-era seat upholstery.

Open letter to WMATA: We’re psyched about the all metal exterior, and suppose we can live without putting our knees on the back of the seat in front of us, but can we please lose the cheesy America’s Metro logo? And for-the-love-of-all-that-is-holy, just pick a solid color for the seats. Hugs and Kisses, BeyondDC.

BeyondDC returned from an extended holiday in Colorado (there will be photos eventually) to find the site offline. Whoops.

The technical problem that caused the glitch has now been resolved, and readers can expect some blog posts in the near future. We’ve also (once again) fixed the newsfeed reader on the left side of the screen, hopefully this time permanently. Cheers.