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?