Improve Beltway Traffic? Not the Goal

I spent the better part of a day on an informational tour of the Purple Line, known officially as the Bi-County Transitway.

Maryland Transportation Secretary Robert L. Flanagan, project manager Michael D. Madden and a bunch of aides walked us through the nuts and bolts of the project. Then we all piled into a minibus for a tour of part of the proposed transit line in Montgomery and Prince George's counties.

The hoped-for timetable has construction starting in 2010 or 2011 and ending by about 2015. That's the hoped-for scenario, though, so it's quite possible nothing will have happened by then.

Six options are being studied, three with light-rail trains and three involving rapid-bus service. Metro-style heavy-rail was shot down long ago, Flanagan said, citing high costs and some community opposition.

The line will extend 14 miles from Bethesda to New Carrollton, with stops in Silver Spring and College Park. If rapid-bus service becomes the preferred option, it could be phased in. Light rail would be done all at once.

Cost estimates range from $375 million to $1.6 billion, and the state hopes to get half of that from the federal government. Flanagan said that an initial environmental document would be released in mid-2007 and that one of the proposed options would be chosen by the end of next year.

We learned that it will be very difficult to do anything. They showed us how little space there was to build anything between existing train tracks and neighborhoods; they showed us how little space there is coming into the Silver Spring Station; and they showed us some narrow roads where houses would have to be taken to make way for the project.

We also learned that this project is not expected to make traffic better. Flanagan said there is too much pent-up Beltway demand for a transit line to reduce traffic on that roadway; and, in any case, the goal is to provide people with options in a congested, developing corridor.

Build it now wrote: It is interesting that this tour apparently focused on the difficult engineering challenges while the effort to build the intercounty connector has focused so much on how engineering can resolve environmental and community conflicts. Yes, threading light rail through communities will be difficult, but this is quiet rail transit, not a highway choked full of diesel-spewing traffic -- traffic that, by the way, is growing on all roads in the Purple Line corridor.

This tour, now? Could it be that the Ehrlich administration finally understands that if 80 percent of Montgomery County voters want transit and transit-oriented development rather than mega-roads and sprawl, maybe they should at least be pretending to be working hard on this study?

Unfortunately, the pace of planning for this project could not have slowed any more than it has in the past three years.

P. Darmody wrote: A bus will never be a train, no matter how they try to peddle it ("Bus Rapid Transit," for example). A bus will never have the efficient carrying capacity of a rail system. BRT is another way of cutting transit construction costs and making it look as if the politicians are saving money. But in the long run, they're being very short-sighted.

Driver guy wrote: By overlooking Metro, the planners for this line have made a huge mistake. Metro is the only feasible solution to this problem. In fact, the Purple Line should follow the Beltway around the city, connecting the endpoints of each Metro line.

Robert Rosenberg wrote: Three points to consider:

1. At this point, the projected ridership of the Purple Line does not justify the projected expenditure. Therefore, the current defense for the Purple Line is that it will promote regional economic development.

2. The Purple Line will not positively help the environment because it will sacrifice multiple green spaces, tree canopies and watersheds all to induce existing bus riders to use it. It will not induce a significant number of drivers to leave their cars at home.

3. There is no indication that the Purple Line will significantly improve the vitality of communities such as Langley Park and New Carrollton, but it will definitely have negative impacts on economically and culturally diverse neighborhoods such as East Silver Spring.