Safety - Another Issue for the McLean Chamber to Answer

The McLean Chamber of Commerce is supporting a Tysons Corner tunnel for the Silver Line. The group's affiliate has scheduled a public meeting for November 15 at the McLean Community Center. That's a positive step if the meeting goes beyond PR and addresses the real issue, including those raised by tysonstunnel.org. The Five-Legged Dog has previously suggested three questions that should be addressed by the Chamber.

Here is one more. The press reports that the National Traffic Safety Board has just released a finding that Boston's Big Dig tunnel, which collapsed earlier killing a motorist, was "designed with a smaller margin of safety than other tunnel ceilings in America." The engineers failed to design sufficient redundancy into the tunnel's fasteners for the heavy concrete blocks. There was no backup for a fastener failure. The result was an unnecessary death.

Hopefully, this would not occur with the proposed Tysons Tunnel. But, realistically, the tunnel's (and, indeed, the entire Metro expansion's) supporters are faced with severe pressure to reduce costs. The current proposal has seen scaled-back features, including the critical pedestrian bridges. Given this existing tendency to cut corners, the strong inflation in construction costs, and the desire of some supporters to build the Silver Line at any cost, we need to be concerned about safety.

One would hope that the Chamber would address this issue at its November 15 meeting with more than mere words.