Silver Line Dulles WMATA Metrorail progress/pictures

Loudoun county green lit a bunch of datacenters around the Loudoun Gateway station IIRC. The thought here is that IT workers flying in can take metro to get to their cages without having to rent a car or something like that. A little far fetched IMO and not the best use of space but it is what it is...

JDC wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 1:21 pmI assume there is no precedent for Metro shutting a station when there is not enough riders to justify keeping it open?

Has WMATA ever permanently closed a Metro station?

justalurker66
Has WMATA ever permanently closed a Metro station?

The answer to that question is no.

I will note that Arlington Cemetery is the only station that closes earlier then the rest of stations in the system , 7:00 PM from October 1 to March 31 and 10:00 PM from April 1 to September 30. It is also the only station in the system that was built with 100% federal funding.

YOLO wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 3:31 pm Loudoun county green lit a bunch of datacenters around the Loudoun Gateway station IIRC. The thought here is that IT workers flying in can take metro to get to their cages without having to rent a car or something like that. A little far fetched IMO and not the best use of space but it is what it is...

I'm going to throw a wrench in that idea later on, but let me describe the train wreck first.

My day job has data centers in Ashburn. To get to them by transit, you can go all the way out to Ashburn and then take a Silver Line rush-hour bus to within walking distance... but going back to the station, you have to walk across two six-lane parkways to get to a bus stop in front of a Home Depot OR transfer to the right direction.

It's 1h36m to get there from BWI Airport. If I take transit from MARC, it's 4h. If I have equipment, it's worth driving.

But then, here's the wrench: My day job offers "remote hands" in which technicians that the job provides will receive from UPS/FedEx/etc, rack, connect, and power on the server. Those techs are on hand 24/7. What is to say some company who has a rack or ten in our data center has already configured their firewall to accept a server they've already shipped, and they just need it racked, plugged in, and turned on? Some *big* companies?

That was employed heavily by said companies during the pandemic, and I bet they're still opting for that in most cases.

...which blows the "Tech by transit" idea out of the water.

Nice idea, but not only poorly executed, is kinda unneeded.

I was reading a newsletter from my local representative and she mentioned upcoming projects by Dominion intended to serve the growth in demand in Loudoun County, especially Ashburn and its data centers. I went to the webpage that discusses the projects, https://engage.erm.com/novareliability/page/aspen, and came across this nugget from a June 2023 meeting of stakeholders discussing the potential routing of power lines for the "Ashburn to Golden" project:

Jake Rosenburg, ERM, led the discussion regarding routing for Aspen to Golden. The W&OD is the most direct, but there is limited space. Permission is needed from Northern Virginia Parks and 93 homes would be directly impacted. The Dulles Greenway Route also has limited in space and would require crossing 230 kV lines. There are no homes within the Route 7 right of way and fewer homes near the right of way. The Dulles Greenway operators plan to extend the silver line to Leesburg which would push the transmission lines out.

What do folks make of that nugget? He cannot possibly be correct, right? First, why would the Greenway operating company want to push the Silver line further out? That would seem to undercut their own revenue stream. Second, and more important, I do not think they have any means to "plan to extend" the Silver line - that would be entirely up to other entities, including WMATA. It's such a bizarre comment from Mr. Rosenburg - maybe he was referring to something else? The quote is from this pdf https://engage.erm.com/sites/novareliab ... ummary.pdf

Per the Dulles Greenway owner, the Dulles Greenway was designed at the time it was built to accommodate mass transit in the median all the way to Leesburg. It also looks like costs are exceeding revenues on the Greenway, so if they can increase revenues by leasing land to WMATA I don't see why they shouldn't. FWIW, it will probably be 2056 by the time any extension of the Silver Line to Leesburg is done, at which time the Dulles Greenway is scheduled to become a property of VDOT.

STrRedWolf wrote: ↑Thu Jun 22, 2023 6:11 am

YOLO wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 3:31 pm Loudoun county green lit a bunch of datacenters around the Loudoun Gateway station IIRC. The thought here is that IT workers flying in can take metro to get to their cages without having to rent a car or something like that. A little far fetched IMO and not the best use of space but it is what it is...

I'm going to throw a wrench in that idea later on, but let me describe the train wreck first.

My day job has data centers in Ashburn. To get to them by transit, you can go all the way out to Ashburn and then take a Silver Line rush-hour bus to within walking distance... but going back to the station, you have to walk across two six-lane parkways to get to a bus stop in front of a Home Depot OR transfer to the right direction.

It's 1h36m to get there from BWI Airport. If I take transit from MARC, it's 4h. If I have equipment, it's worth driving.

But then, here's the wrench: My day job offers "remote hands" in which technicians that the job provides will receive from UPS/FedEx/etc, rack, connect, and power on the server. Those techs are on hand 24/7. What is to say some company who has a rack or ten in our data center has already configured their firewall to accept a server they've already shipped, and they just need it racked, plugged in, and turned on? Some *big* companies?

That was employed heavily by said companies during the pandemic, and I bet they're still opting for that in most cases.

...which blows the "Tech by transit" idea out of the water.

Nice idea, but not only poorly executed, is kinda unneeded.

It's been well over a decade since I worked in the area, but my company also had servers in Ashburn. I worked out of our office in Tyson's Corner. Like you, I can't really imagine taking mass transit out there. In fact I went so rarely, that at one point I realized it had been well over a year since I had been there and the only reason I was going was to orient our new network engineer.

This does remind me, back in '98 or so we acquired a company that had servers located at a data center in Tyson's Corner itself. I wish I could remember exactly where. It was one of the more... interesting... setups. One of the most anonymous looking data centers I ever encountered (and that's saying something). All the racks were on wheels so apparently the DC owner could wheel them around a bit as needed (by lifting up the raised floor to allow the cables to follow. I always imagined that at some point a rack rolled into the open floor!)

Took the Silver Line from Ashburn to Dulles last week for the first time. I was one of those people dismissing the distance from the terminal by citing the moving walkways, which exist. But, having experienced it firsthand, it still is a long trek from the baggage claim area to the Metro station's faregates and there are several areas where you're on foot between moving walkways (one of which was broken on a Monday and still out of service on Wednesday). There are also elevation changes which require escalators (or an elevator) and one of those not being in service could make a big hassle. So, in the end, it's not something I can see myself using with big luggage (I had a carry on) or when traveling with kids or the elderly.

JDC wrote: ↑Sun Oct 15, 2023 1:09 pm Took the Silver Line from Ashburn to Dulles last week for the first time. I was one of those people dismissing the distance from the terminal by citing the moving walkways, which exist. But, having experienced it firsthand, it still is a long trek from the baggage claim area to the Metro station's faregates and there are several areas where you're on foot between moving walkways (one of which was broken on a Monday and still out of service on Wednesday). There are also elevation changes which require escalators (or an elevator) and one of those not being in service could make a big hassle. So, in the end, it's not something I can see myself using with big luggage (I had a carry on) or when traveling with kids or the elderly.

Security issues granted, would a short rail shuttle helped in this case?

The only thing that would have helped would have been tunneling through Dulles and putting the Metro closer to the terminal. Those pedestrian tunnels already existed as they were originally built to serve the parking decks on the far side of entry loop used by automobiles.

It's not that security would be an issue, it's the baggage handling under the terminal would be interfered with, so if building a short train outside that point, you are looking at a train to go at most 1500' straight with no change in elevation. I've watched people on the Silver and Red lines (Red to Union Station) and on Metro busses with large bags; it's a struggle for them and for others; generally public transit isn't the aid we hope it would be in those situations.

I was skimming Metro's post about this weekend's track work and I was surprised to see Silver Line work mentioned. Specifically, Metro "will replace corroded concrete crossties" in the area between Spring Hill and Wiehle, necessitating speed restrictions. Should concrete crossties from Phase 1 already be corroded? That seems extremely early.

JDC wrote: ↑Sat Nov 25, 2023 3:37 pm I was skimming Metro's post about this weekend's track work and I was surprised to see Silver Line work mentioned. Specifically, Metro "will replace corroded concrete crossties" in the area between Spring Hill and Wiehle, necessitating speed restrictions. Should concrete crossties from Phase 1 already be corroded? That seems extremely early.

Well, major construction in that area started at 2009, all the weather that the DC area gets, plus some variability of materials... 10-14 years? Probably not sealed properly.

Poor concrete or not enough crack prevention. moisture gets in, add salt for ice, gets on steel reinforcing, corrasion starts. Do you need more info?

An understanding of the failures would be good. Per Assessment of Concrete Tie Life on US Freight Railroads, CN can expect a 40 year life for a concrete tie, which may suggest that taxpayers in the WMATA area should be pressing for more information--should WMATA be looking at the tie manufacturer for the costs to replace a concrete tie after only <15 years, or is this activity in an area that should expect a shorter lifespan for all kinds of ties due to external factors?

RandallW wrote: ↑Mon Oct 16, 2023 3:58 am The only thing that would have helped would have been tunneling through Dulles and putting the Metro closer to the terminal.

I came into IAD last fall and 100% agree with you. You walk about 33% of the way, that being the gap between the segments of barley-moving walkways. I'll regard this as a missed opportunity to shorten airport transit travel time, and thus encourage its use vs. driving.