Need For Competitive Bidding

• Dulles Transit Partners (“DTP”) — a consortium of Bechtel (the project manager of the “Big Dig” in Boston) and Washington Group International — has a contract for Preliminary Engineering work on the Dulles Metrorail Project.
• The Commonwealth is negotiating with DTP for Final Design & Construction work. DTP currently is not being required to bid against competitors in pricing this work -- even though the contract involves our public money and is valued in the billions!!!
• The Commonwealth, however, has the option to open this Final Design & Construction work to public, competitive bidding – the standard for public investment. Concerned by DTP costs, the Fairfax Board of Supervisors recently passed a resolution urging the Commonwealth to use competitive bidding to assure the best value for the taxpayer.

Project Choices — Tunnel Tunnel or Elevated Rail Through Tysons

• The current “Elevated Rail” will put metrorail on an elevated structure 35 feet high (or more) through most of Tysons – see the effects of other aerial structures like Whitehurst Freeway in Georgetown. The proposed “Tysons Tunnel” will put metrorail in a 3.5 mile tunnel beneath all of Tysons Corner (same alignment, same station locations).
• The Project has two phases — Phase I from East Falls Church through Tysons to Wiehle Avenue and Phase II from Wiehle Avenue to Dulles and beyond. The Phase I Elevated Rail was priced last spring at $2.3 billion by DTP. The Phase I Tysons Tunnel was priced last summer at $2 billion (i.e. less than the Elevated Rail) by a world class team of engineers and builders. Of this, the tunnel itself is only $410 million.
• An American Society of Civil Engineers panel, however, thought the Phase I Tysons Tunnel might cost up to $200 million more than the Elevated Rail. This difference would still be only 5% of the combined $4.0 billion cost projected for Phase I and Phase II.