Montgomery Planning Board Backs I-270 Rapid Bus Line; Man Acquitted in Landover Hills Killing; 2nd Suspect Arrested in Langley Park Slaying

INTERSTATE 270

Rapid Bus Line Is Recommended

The Montgomery County Planning Board recommended late Monday that a transit line planned for the Interstate 270 corridor be a bus rapid transit system, rather than light rail, and that the highway be widened with toll lanes that would be free or discounted to vehicles with numerous passengers.

The board made its recommendation to the County Council, which is scheduled to vote July 21 on the project, known as the Corridor Cities Transitway. The council's choice will then go to the Maryland Department of Transportation as part of local input into plans for handling traffic congestion in the rapidly growing corridor, which is considered vital to the state's economic development.

Public officials and the Gaithersburg-Germantown business community have called for light rail as a more permanent investment, but Montgomery planners said it would attract too few riders to justify its higher cost under standards for winning federal construction money. A bus rapid transit system, in which large buses would run in their own lanes and stop at stations spaced much farther apart than traditional bus stops, is estimated to cost $450 million. A light rail line is projected to cost $777.5 million. The 14-mile transit line would run between the Shady Grove Metro station and an area south of Clarksburg.

The highway widening is projected to cost about $3.8 billion.

State transit planners are continuing to study changing the transit route to run closer to the area surrounding the Shady Grove Adventist Hospital complex to attract more riders.

-- Katherine Shaver

CRIME

Man Is Acquitted in Md. Killing

A Prince George's County Circuit Court jury acquitted a District man Monday of first-degree murder and other charges in the shooting death of a man in the fall.

James J. Young, 29, was found not guilty of killing Wayne Alan Lipford, who was 43 when he was gunned down in a park in Landover Hills on Oct. 18. Prosecutors alleged that Young killed Lipford during what started as a drug deal.