Quote:
Originally Posted by jmecklenborg
Google led me to this interesting article from 2005:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archi...-bad25288d82d/
I'm really surprised that we're over 500 feet in this area, since it's only a few miles from sea level, and NVA has never struck me as having a significant incline.
Also, some circa-2015 reporting complains that the silver line was poaching riders from the orange line. That thought doesn't acknowledge that to whatever extent the silver line doesn't serve Tyson's well, it definitely makes no attempt to serve an existing node west of the Dulles Toll Road.
It seems to me that Tyson's should have been built first, and if they had, would there still have been an impetus to build the orange line past the Dulles Toll Rd.? |
per wikipedia:
The Orange Line alignment to Vienna via the Arlington subway and the I-66 median was chosen in 1968, when Tysons was still just a single shopping mall and a highway interchange - not a major employment center. The goal of Metro was to bring workers from the suburbs into DC offices - reverse commuting was not significant.
8 years later in 1976, as the Arlington subway was under construction, the Feds ordered WMATA to look into rerouting the Orange Line to Tysons instead of Vienna. But they decided not to do it because it would require all-new environmental impact statements and delay the project by 5 years, and Tysons was still more of a shopping area than an employment center. It really became a big employment center with the defense build-up in the Reagan years, but by then the line to Vienna was already under construction.