From neglected server-buddy Live From The Third Rail, we have the story of the Tyson's tunnel. Here's the five-cent version: The powers that be want to extend the D.C. metro out to the remote and strangely-designed Dulles Airport. To do so, they have to go through Tyson's Corner, a tangle of office towers, eight-lane roads and postmodern dispair. This edge city hell can be traversed either by elevated tracks or a tunnel. The pro-tunnel forces (mainly local developers) have a website that includes a series of PDFs, including one on the height of the proposed elevated tracks that reads, in part:
Notice the 70’ height which is planned to cross over the Capital Beltway. Close your eyes and picture all of the chaos; traffic tie-ups during construction, loss to businesses and a future ruined for your children. [emphasis mine]
"Daddy, I was going to do well in school, go to college and grow up to be successful, healthy and happy, but the mean people blotted out the sun with their big bad train tracks over the Beltway, depriving me of natural light by which to read my schoolbooks. Now I spend my days smoking crack and panhandling under the Tyson's East Metro station."
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