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| Loudoun County Board of Supervisors |
"Who Do You Serve?"
Please read the article below. It paints a pretty clear picture of how big business interests in Tysons Corners milked the taxpayer for every nickel they could. Like it or not, that's how the game is played, because some businessmen are shrewd people who know how to make money the easy way.
How? They just keep the campaign contributions, empty promises and press releases rolling, making sure the politicians are there to sign on the dotted line when it's time to close the deal.
If there is any doubt that rail is a financial scam that will roll right over trusting citizens, putting them deeper in debt while the winners take all, then look again. Just follow the money.
Sheep paying unfunded Costs - Reston Times 9-28-05
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This is a portrait of a scam: The developer wants rail to come past his land so the value will soar. Business people think maybe some mega-bucks will spin off to them. Developer steps up and says I'll kick in 25 percent of the cost out of the kindness of my heart, BUT, the fine print says they will only pay a puny pitance of the actual costs. The developers share is fixed, and the taxpayers pay the rest. And know this; Big-Dig-No-Bid-Design-As-You-Go-Bechtel will bleed the job until there is nothing left.
Rail to Dulles and Loudoun is a scam. Face it, they win, we lose. The wheelin' dealin' developers just keep telling our local boys what a sweet dealio this rail thing is.
"I'm telling you son, a guy that works with us to make this happen will really look smart. This will be your county's key to the future, bla, bla, bla." The public is just too out of touch to see the big picture.This looks and smells like a taxpayer funded stimulus for the business community...because it is.
Question to Loudoun Supervisors:
"Who do you serve?"
David LaRock
Hamilton Virginia
The business community apparently knew what Dulles Rail Phase II might have been EXPECTED to cost. The cap indicates that they suspected that somebody might balloon the cost.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if they thought it might get ballooned to 2 or 3 times what it should cost. The evidence shows that the costs DID get ballooned to that extent.
The cost of the Dulles Rail Rt 28 station is among the few element costs for Dulles Rail Phase II that are visible to the public, and only because the FTA wanted to take credit for a 'savings' because they shoved that cost onto Fairfax County in 2011. (Yes, it's a lie to call that a 'savings' - but the truth is very hard to locate in the Dulles Rail project. In fact, the FTA first claimed the station cost $136 million, in their July 3, 2011 White Paper. That was because they counted the parking garage twice... once, in the station cost, and again, in the parking garage totals. But who's counting?)
OK, SHOULD the Dulles Rail Rt 28 station cost $83 million? The answer is no. A comparable metro station completed in December 2011 in wealthy, posh Fairfield, Connecticut, cost $43.7 million. That's about HALF of what the Dulles Rail Rt 28 station is supposed to cost. Did MWAA only overcharge us for the Rt 28 station, or (more likely) are they overcharging us for ALL of the Dulles Rail Phase II stations? Why don't YOU tell ME - can anybody explain why our metro stations should cost two times as much?
Here's another point. People living near Washington DC may remember the Franconia-Springfield Metro extension in 1997. Let's compare it to Dulles Rail phase II.
Franconis-Springfield Metro: 3.3 miles of track and one Metro station: $175 million.
Dulles Rail Phase II: 11.6 miles of track and six Metro stations: over $3 billion.
Hmmm. Dulles Rail is about 5 times the size of the Springfield extension, yet it costs about 17 times as much? That is about 3.5 times the proportional cost item for item. Can inflation account for this 3.5 to 1 ballooning? No, because we saw that the Rt 28 station costs two times what a comparable station very recently cost.
In fact, if you multiply the Franconia-Springfield cost by 5, you get $175 million times 5, or $875 million. (Note that this is about the same as the $856 million noted in the old news clip in the link. Isn't that interesting.)
Rail wold be expensive, but not economy crushing, except that we are being billed for easily two times the costs that we should pay. Where is the rest of that money going? We are being overcharged at least $1.6 Billion, and that money is going SOMEWHERE. It's time for somebody to follow it, I think. No?
I don't know if anybody noticed, but $1.6 billion is a lot of money. This is not something that should be ignored. But it certainly HAS been ignored,hasn't it? FTA, a division of US DOT, ignored it. The media has ignored it. Even the people who OPPOSE Dulles Rail have ignored it! It's time that stopped. No?