No date set for opening of Silver line
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| The Tysons Corner Station. |
Metro’s new Silver line will open at some point within in the next few months, but Richard Sarles, general manager and CEO of the Washington Area Metropolitan Transit Authority (WMATA), would not pin down a specific date at a meeting with the Fairfax Committee of 100 March
11. The Silver line will open “90 days after it’s completed,”
Searles said.
The most recent setback for the long-delayed Silver line is due to the failure of the construction company,
Dulles Transit Partners, to meet a series of contractual obligations related to the
automatic train control system, elevators, escalators, and other problems.
“Safety is the most important thing,” so the Silver line “won’t
be rolled out until all the problems are resolved,” said Sharon Bulova, chair
of the Board of Supervisors. The new stations in the first phase of the Silver
line are completed; “we have to make sure the software is ready.”
11.4 miles of track and five stations—McLean, Tysons Corner, Greensboro, Spring
Hill, and Wiehle-Reston East—and is accessible from the Orange line at the East
Falls Church station.
impact on the D.C. metro region’s economic competitiveness when it was first
built, and the Silver line is already having a huge impact in bringing more
investment to Tysons Corner.
are being realigned to connect with the Silver line stations, and three new bus
routes will connect the VRE stations to Tysons, using the beltway express
lanes. New bus circulators will connect various points within Tysons.
and to Ashburn in Loudoun County, is expected to be completed in 2018. Plans to
build the Dulles station underground had been scrapped due to the high cost,
but Bulova says the above-ground station, in a parking garage, will only be a
four-minute walk on a moving sidewalk from the airport. “It will be fast,
efficient, and comfortable,” she said.
jurisdictions involved in the project received approval for a $1.9 billion federal loan under the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act. It is the biggest
TIFIA loan ever and won’t have to be repaid
until five years after the project is completed, Bulova said. Fairfax County’s share is $403 million.
rail along Route 66 to Centreville and Manassas, with a stop at the Fairfax
County Government Center in Fairfax.
line. Sarles told the audience a $900 million-a-year rebuilding program was started
four years ago to address maintenance and safety problems that led to the 2009
Metro collision at the Fort Totten station. The train operator and eight
passengers were killed, and 80 people were injured.
much of it being done on weekends and nights, causing delays. When the
rebuilding effort stated, only 80 percent of the escalators were operational on
any given day; today that’s up to 92 percent, Sarles said. Within the next two years, 100
escalators will have been replaced.
hole,” he said, although WMATA needs to make “significant investments every
year” to get to the point where the system was 15 years ago. WMATA recently got
220 new cars, which will start operating later this year.
Rosslyn, Metro Center, and Gallery Place stations—are expected to become
increasingly crowded in the next six to 10 years as the area experiences
population and employment growth, he said.
in the stations to relieve overcrowding on the platforms. Service will be reduced on the Blue
line, which is being underutilized.