The high-stakes maneuvering over the $4 billion Rail-to-Dulles project is heating up. It turns out that the Bechtel/Washington Group construction consortium has a rival, a team headed by Fairfax developer WestGroup. The state has a no-bid, public-private partnership proposal from Bechtel to build the Metro extension. But according to Alec MacGillis at the Washington Post, state officials may entertain a bid from the rival WestGroup group.
On the upside, WestGroup may come up with a lower bid for the gigantic project. One of its team members is Dragados, a Spanish company that specializes in the large-bore tunneling needed if the Metro line is to run underneath Tysons Corner rather than above ground. On the downside, there’s no guarantee that WestGroup will submit a better bid, and the bid solicitation itself will create another delay could run up construction costs and spook federal funding, which is already looking tenuous.
The Kaine administration faces tough choices in a very high-stakes game. It will be interesting to see how well the Kaniacs play big-league political poker.
(P.S. Kudos to MacGillis at the WaPo for his solid ongoing reporting of the Rail-to-Dulles controversy. The Post’s coverage is much improved from earlier this year.)
