money to begin construction. This project needs to be built.

for people who live in West Tysons so we could go in and see the plans.  Turns out to have been hosted by Bechtel, but there was a woman there who worked for the State and now the Airports Authority.

Basically a dog and pony show about how nice it is all going to be and all that.

People there asked about the tunnel - these folks were polite, and said that the Governor had decided against it, yada, yada.

When they put on the best possible face, how did it look?  I'd expect it to look spectacular when they controlled every aspect of presentation.  If not, well, that says a lot.

They were mainly talking about impacts to people living in Tysons, so it had more to do with things related to what roads will get blocked off and when, the impact to utilities, how ad the traffic will be and all that.

They talked about how there weren't any parking garages at any of the Metro stations, which means that the already tight parking in our neighborhood will get worse and people try and drive to Metro and then park to ride.  Within our development we already have resident-only parking, but there is an area just outside that is open to anyone.

They mentioned that even with the Bechtel design, that there is a much shorter tunnel where 7 & 123 cross, and how that is still the "riskiest" part of the project.  Well yeah, I imagine that's true if Bechtel is doing the digging.

There is one interesting thing about all of this.  If we had gotten the tunnel, then Metro would be below ground, but the utilities would be above ground.  With overhead Metro, then the utilities go below ground, and Metro goes above ground.  No matter which option, you get something ugly up in the air.

I hadn't heard that one before.  How does that compare to other existing sections of underground Metrorail?  Not that I've been looking for "utilities", but I don't recall seeing much above ground in the Ballston-Rossyln corridor.

And that's very interesting about the lack of parking garages.  I take it to mean that they are expecting:

1. Commuting into Tysons from Arlington and DC (the only places it would make sense to take the train if you work in Tysons)

2. Commuting out of Tysons (to Arlington/DC) by the rather small number of people who live within walking distance of the four stops.

It sure sounds like this configuration (lacking garages) would be almost useless to suburban commuters around Tysons - although Betchtel might be thinking the suburbanites would all park at the Reston and Dulles stops.

Or they just don't want to spend the money on garages because that would... wait for it... increase the cost of the entire project yet again and the FTA would pull it's funding and the whole thing would crash and burn. 

One of the advantages of the tunnel was that there would be no need to relocate utilities.  By that I presume they mean the above ground utilities - all of the wires up on poles and all that.  I am guessing that the utilities would be in the way of the above ground stations and the walkways to get there, so they needed to be relocated underground.

According to the Bechtel folks, it was Fairfax county that nixed the parking garages.  Mainly because they wanted to discourage even more cars from trying to pile into Tysons.
In a way, it does make sense - if you look at Metro overall, it is only outer suburban stations that have any amount of real parking - inner stations were designed such that people would take a bus to the station or walk.