Metro Silver Line: Wiehle Metro station approved, will fill with smoke from track fires by 2013

Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved the design of Wiehle Avenue's awesome new Metro station, which someday might have actual tracks connecting it to Tysons Corner and more exotic points east (Falls Church!), though no one will ever know for sure because of the track fires and tunnel goblins.

The station's supposed to open in 2013 (with the first train arriving seven years later). From the description, it sounds like it will have all the aesthetic charm of New York's Port Authority Bus Terminal, minus the junkies and hookers and whatnot.

The station site has been designed with a 2,300-car parking garage that rises 85 feet into the air. Architects have also incorporated bus depots into both of the station’s entrances, in anticipation of shuttle service from both Loudoun County and the Herndon/Monroe Park & Ride parking lots. There will also be 150 spaces for bicycles.

THOUGH the supervisors approved this plan for the Wiehle Avenue site and the Planning Commission backed it, both bodies said the county is still in negotiations to get more transit-friendly development at the station location.

"We are negotiating a ground lease with a private developer and we expect to wrap up those negotiations in early March," said Richard Stevens, the county coordinator for the Dulles Rail project. Construction on the Wiehle Avenue garage does not have to start until 2011, given the county plenty of time to put another plan in place, he said.

"We have moving forward with plan B in case plan A doesn’t work," said Hunter Mill Planning Commissioner Frank de la Fe.

Part of the need for a plan B, probably a 145-story RA headquarters building with gold-plated door handles so people can pick up their pool passes on their way home from work, is because Reston -- so world reknown for its awesome forward-looking urban planning -- actually has covenants that prohibit mixed use residential/commercial development along the Toll Road, unlike, we don't know, ANY OTHER AREA WHICH HAS METRO STATIONS.

The county must try to get private landowners in the area to agree to overturn it before moving forward with a transit-oriented development project, said de la Fe.

"I hope this never gets built like this," said At-large Planning Commissioner Walter Alcorn.

And they're among the project's backers.