By Susan DeFord
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 15, 2007
State transportation officials say Columbia's future might not include rail transit despite pleas to extend such service to the county's largest community.
Howard Del. Elizabeth Bobo (D) asked state officials last year to study whether Washington's Metro rail system or the MARC, the state's commuter rail service, could run to Columbia. But state officials have told Bobo in recent weeks that both options would cost billions over the next 30 years, a prohibitive expense. That should provide local officials with "a little dose of reality," Bobo said.
"We can't move forward thinking we're going to have [rail] transit anytime soon in downtown Columbia," Bobo said after a meeting of Maryland transportation officials in Ellicott City last week.
An official with General Growth Properties, Columbia's largest developer, was aware of the state findings on rail transit. The company's evolving master plan for a redeveloped Town Center will focus on improved bus service within Howard and between counties as a principal transit option.
"We just don't have a hearty enough system now for our future needs," said Chuck McMahon, vice president of development for General Growth in Columbia.
The company's plan, which probably will be submitted to county officials early next year, might call for the eventual creation of a transit hub in Town Center, McMahon said.
"What we're trying to do is make it so people are not entirely dependent on their cars when they're in Town Center," he said.
State officials came to Howard last week to review a transportation spending plan that focused largely on improving roads and bridges in the county.
Bobo and transit backers have said that Columbia's redevelopment and a major expansion at nearby Fort Meade in the next few years justify investment in public transit.
"We really need to start making some kind of shift on transit," Bobo told state officials. "It's got to be a big shift, and it won't be painless."
According to a state feasibility study, extending Metro rail service from Greenbelt to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport through Columbia would add $1.3 to $4.3 billion to the cost of expanding the Green Line to BWI, which is estimated at $2.2 to $2.9 billion.
There are also significant environmental impacts to wetlands, streams and woods along five alignments to Columbia that were studied, and estimated travel times would increase 15 to 35 minutes, compared with a direct route to BWI, transportation officials said.
That makes extending the Green Line to Columbia impractical, said Jack Cahalan, a spokesman with the Department of Transportation.
The fate of the Green Line extension might be determined by a state study of the Baltimore-Washington corridor that's examining multiple forms of transit over the next 20 years. That study will be completed in mid-2008, Cahalan said.
The Maryland Transit Administration recently told Bobo that it could cost $1 billion to include Columbia on MARC's commuter Camden line, which runs through Laurel, Savage and Jessup several miles east. Adding a spur to Columbia "is not financially feasible at this point," Cahalan said.
MARC plans to add trains in the next two years and increase service during weekends, late evenings and midday that would help improve transit service in the area, he said. Public transit advocates were not surprised by the latest word on rapid transit but were disappointed.
"Other pieces of infrastructure in the county have made progress -- schools, the hospital," said Judy Pittman, a member of the local group Transportation Advocates. "Public transit hasn't kept up with the growth of the rest of the county."
The intra-county Howard Transit bus service reported 750,000 riders last fiscal year, an increase of 63 percent since 2002. Its riders in September rose to 67,300, 7 percent more than its ridership for September 2006, said Carol Filipczak, chairman of the county's Public Transportation Board.
But the growing bus system struggles with equipment breakdowns, rider complaints and wait times of up to an hour between buses. Furthermore, the system does not help the nearly one-third of county workers who commute outside of Howard. Their transit options are MARC trains or private commuter bus services that run weekdays from Columbia to Baltimore and Washington.
Increasingly, "we've been getting questions about regional transit. We need a major change in how we look at transportation," said Filipczak.
County Council member Mary Kay Sigaty (D-West Columbia) said that bus transit might be Howard's best option.
"I see it as a much more viable regional answer than rail," said Sigaty at the end of a Tuesday meeting of Transportation Advocates. "It works with our existing road system. We should be looking at ways to capitalize on resources we already have."
View all comments that have been posted about this article.