WMATA lowered maximum speeds long before what is stated in that Washington Post article. Rolling stock performance profiles were detuned back in the mid 1990s (reducing acceleration, deceleration rates and top speed) when stress cracks were found in the 1k car bodies and to prevent them from forming in the nearly identical 2,3 and 4k car bodies.

The 2, 3 and 6k, cars don't have the LEDs needed to display the Silver line color on the side and front destination signs. 164 of the 7k cars were procured to increase the fleet size for Silver line.

There are no destination codes for Prince George's Plaza or Tysons Corner, so there was no change there. The sound files played by the announcement system are unrelated to the station names in the destination code table.

Non critical things will not prevent the cars from being operated. Critical things will.

Likely correct. With all the shit WMATA has has been dealing with over the last 15 years, that one was nowhere near top of the priority list.

I stopped and toured all of the stations on the return trip Ashburn after riding the first train to Wiehle - Reston East and noticed two train destine to Ashburn displaying a Route 722 destination sign.

Basically what is happening, WMATA has not upgraded the software that translates the destination codes to station names on the cars displaying Route 722 instead of Ashburn. At the time the destination codes were revised for the new stations on the Silver line, Ashburn was still being identified by its Route 722 planning name.

Side note: Destination code 34 has never been changed sense creation of the table of destination codes back in the early 1970s, as the 1k cars were delivered from Rohr Industries with Dulles Airport in white letters on a black background on their old school sign rolls. It is also the only destination in the code table that was shown as future on the 1968 Adopted Regional System Map. I have been told that the Dulles Airport destination sign was included on the roll signs as an incentive to get political leaders to support and build the line shown as future to Dulles Airport.

Every Environmental Impact Statement has a no build option as part of the study.

It should also be noted that the land procured for the easement for the Dulles Access Road was made wide enough to not only build a future rail line but also to build the Toll Road.

The Federal Transit Administration.

A third track would have increased the costs likely resulting in the line not being built at all.

There were several changes made to the design of the project to cut costs to get the line built that resulted reduced operational flexibility and the number of trains that could be run on the line per hour.

To do this WMATA will have to reduce Orange line service to provide a long enough time gap to skip the station between West Falls Church and Rosslyn. (Based on pre pandemic service levels.)

A better solution would be the return to automatic operation allowing shorter station dwell times, and run trains at the maximum civil speed limit between Ashburn and Ballston. All of the trackage along the Greenway, Access Road, Connector Road and I-66 has a civil speed limit of 75 MPH.

An island platform station would have required a larger land area foot print, as the track would have needed to taper away from each other beyond both end of the station. The foot print for the double crossover alone would have been roughly 2/3 the length of the foot print of an island platform station.

If WMATA had enough rolling stock they could also do that.

Metrorail is a hybrid transit system akin to a cross between commuter rail and rapid transit. All of the system built from scratch in the second half of the last century in the United States were planed like that.