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Purple Line Foes Offer No Ideas, And No Names
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What Ross and other Purple Line advocates say they find troubling is that the alliance has not been upfront about its membership.
"They make it seem like some community organization fighting the project when in fact they're a private country club," said Michael D. Madden, the MTA's project manager on the Purple Line study.
Gonella said he and other Columbia Country Club members have not tried to hide the fact that the club is both an alliance member and a "financial contributor." He said he did not know why the group's Web site was registered anonymously.
The alliance, Gonella said, has members who do not belong to the country club. Asked for their names, he said he did not have them readily available and that he could speak only for the country club. The Web site doesn't list alliance members, he said, because the group is so new. He said he didn't know how many people it had recruited so far.
"It's like any grass-roots organization," Gonella said. "We're meeting with people on a daily basis and recruiting folks. The number probably changes on a daily basis, so I don't want to give the wrong number."
Gonella said country club members, including many who live in the area, have "valid questions to raise" about the Purple Line that go beyond its impact on their golf course. The club questions how the line would relieve traffic congestion if state studies show that 80 percent of its potential riders already take another form of transit. He said the club also believes that the state has not thoroughly considered other routes that wouldn't require clearing large, mature trees along the hiker-biker trail.
Madden said the country club's golf course was built around a 100-foot-wide right-of-way. The land was part of an abandoned rail line that Montgomery bought in 1988 from CSX to preserve for use as a potential trolley route between Bethesda and Silver Spring. Transit planners have ruled out tunneling a Purple Line beneath the trail and golf course, saying it would be too expensive.
Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.
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