Thread: If You Build It They Will Come

If you haven't seen me around much, well it's because I've been working for a major rail project in our area over the summer among other things. The great thing is, I get to share a little bit of that with you. Through the experience I've been able to get a glimpse of the behind the scenes construction going on around the whole site.

It's definitely not something you get to see everyday, go ahead and check these out:



A View of Tysons, on Flickr


Switching Track, on Flickr


Laying Tracks, on Flickr


Silver Metro Soon, on Flickr


Walking Down, on Flickr


Over there, on Flickr


Pieces of a Giant, on Flickr


Putting it Together, on Flickr

So, uh, you're the reason traffic in DC was all messed up when I was down there last month?

But seriously, those are awesome pictures. Well-done.

XD The great irony of the job is that our main project office is located right at the center of the auto-congested city (Tysons Corner) this branch of the rail line is passing through.

If it were in operation today, you can bet I'd use it to get there.

If you were visiting from out of State, I take it you either passed through National or Dulles. If the latter, you definitely saw all this and I sympathise with that congestion. NOT FUN. (seriously, it took me almost 45 minutes one day just to get to the Beltway from the office which is only like a mile from there. My longest commute home was over 2 hours when it should be feasibly 30-45 minutes) All my out of state friends call our area's traffic evil. I agree. Which is why I'm on board to fix it.

@evkl But wait, you were in the area D:

You probably could have passed me and not even realized it XD

Very interesting, thanks for the pictures.

I visit DC fairly regularly (once every other year or so), and I can't wait until they build these new lines. The Silver line and the upgrades look fantastic.

And these are really cool pictures into how the whole thing is built. Thanks for posting!

@Rayne I was driving to visit a friend in Vienna and a few others in the city proper a couple of times. Getting in/around the beltway and that other highway (can't remember which, but it had the work being done) took like 4 hours one time. I lived in DC for a semester, and while basically my entire life was spent on the Red Line, I'm always a fan of expanding transit. All of the trains are massively overcrowded at rush hour.

xD, I saw the DC Metro a few years back, there was something on the maps saying they were going to add another line.

nice

Thanks guys, I have a few more pictures I'll put up later.

Originally Posted by evkl

@Rayne I was driving to visit a friend in Vienna and a few others in the city proper a couple of times.

Not a bad area to be visiting to be sure, and that's actually right where the heart of the project is currently located.

Getting in/around the beltway and that other highway (can't remember which, but it had the work being done) took like 4 hours one time.

Oh man, I feel terrible that you had to live through that, highway traffic in Virginia is the worst. Now especially since there's a major project at nearly almost every point of the beltway on the Virginia side; nearly 20 miles of traveling through construction zones.

You must have been on I-66 or I-495, both are equally nightmarish. You really have to retreat to local roads and go away from the destination you're heading to actually circumvent traffic on the worst days, if that logic makes any sense. Basically it's when taking the 'long' way home becomes the short way because the rest of traffic is just that bad.

I lived in DC for a semester, and while basically my entire life was spent on the Red Line, I'm always a fan of expanding transit. All of the trains are massively overcrowded at rush hour.

That's amazing, I don't know how I never took notice you swung by this way all this time. And yeah, it's pretty well known that the Red and Orange lines are among the most congested at rush hour, they're really hard to improve any more without running parallel lines.

Transit lines certainly do help, they seriously need dedicated funding in our region. ^^ Actually one of my senior projects at my university involved building a transit station for a Light Rail Branch of the Red Line called the Corridor Cities Transitway. It'd be in planning and engineering by now, however our silly Inter County Connector project took a giant chunk of that funding. :/

The Light Rail Purple Line would also go a long way to helping disperse that capacity too.

The Mass Trans is the future of America!

Great Pics by the way!