In a city of monuments, utilitarian public works projects rarely stand out. Commuters and visitors who hop on Metrorail to get around the Washington, DC Metro Area and to see the famous government buildings, memorials and museums, might not notice or consider the incredible amount of resources that goes into building a public rail line.
Heralded for connecting Loudoun County, Dulles International Airport, and Reston Town Center with Washington, DC and bringing some much-needed relief to area commuters, the amount of materials necessary to construct the Silver Line Phase 2A project boggles the mind and rivals some the area’s better-known sites.
- 60,000 cubic yards of concrete were used on the project. That’s enough to fill over 3.5 Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pools.
- Workers laid 260,000 feet of rail, which equals the length of 867 FedExFields.
- The 22 miles of cable trough are enough to make 5.5 roundtrips between the White House and the U.S. Capitol Building.
- The more than 700 miles of cable is long enough to stretch from Washington, DC to Chicago.
- The project required more than 2 million tons of crushed aggregate from local quarries. That weighs the equivalent of 25 Washington Monuments.