Purple Line meetings this week

Purple Line concept as laid out by transit advocates, and first proposed by Mark Jenkins in an article in the City Paper in the late 1980s. Sierra Club image.

Next week, there are two public meetings about the Bi-county Transitway, or "purple line," between Montgomery and Prince George's Counties.

The Examiner has had a number of pieces about this, including an editorial that comes out in favor of Bus Rapid Transit, rather than rail, "A different kind of Purple Line." From the piece:

Now that the long-awaited Intercounty Connector is finally going to be built, there’s no time to waste moving to action on other much-needed transportation improvements for the Washington region. That means some sort of Purple Line, but not the versions currently proposed by the two candidates who are hoping to succeed Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan.

Last month, the Montgomery County Council voted to spend $5 million to update the Bethesda Metro stop in anticipation of the project. But this was somewhat premature, as there’s still no consensus on what form a Purple Line linking Bethesda, Silver Spring and New Carrollton should take. The option that should be at the top of the list is a bus rapid transit system connecting these existing Metro stations. While the cost of a 14-mile rail extension is estimated at $2 billion, BRT could move just as many people the same distance at a tenth of the price and be in place to do it much sooner.

BRT is much cheaper to create than light or heavy rail, there is no question. But there is a big difference, overall, in ridership. Light and heavy rail cost much more to build (I imagine heavy rail, like the WMATA subway, is out of the question in any case due to ridershp projections and resultant cost-benefit analysis) but each trainset carries far more riders than BRT.

Still, it might be worth doing BRT to begin with, in order to prove/make the case that this transit corridor is worth developing.

On Monday, the Examiner published this article, "Bi-County Transitway: The hot topic in Maryland," and a series of meetings about it. Two were last week, but two are coming up this week:

Bethesda, 4-8 p.m. June 19
Bethesda Chevy Chase High School, 4301 East-West Highway, Bethesda

College Park/Riverdale Park/New Carrollton, 4-8 p.m. June 21
College Park City Hall, Municipal Center Council Chambers, 4500 Knox Road, College Park

From the article:

The transitway would provide a 14-mile high-capacity public transportation link — either bus-rapid transit or light-rail service — between the Bethesda and New Carrollton Metro stations. The project as currently planned would not follow the Capital Crescent Trail, which has been at the center of the debate for decades.

Although state transportation officials still say they expect to begin construction in 2010, the future of the project depends heavily on federal support. State transportation officials are optimistic that 50 percent of the project, expected to cost between $360 million and $1.6 billion depending on alignment and modes, can be funded with federal dollars. But with the groundbreaking of the InterCounty Connector last month, some worry that the Bi-County Transitway could be delayed because hundreds of millions of dollars are already being pumped into that east-west connector.

The Examiner ran a number of letters to the editor about the Purple Line throughout the week:

Letters: June 16, 2006 - 06/16/2006
The governor’s priorities should be Purple Line, not ICC
Letters: June 15, 2006 - 06/15/2006
Bus system would just add to traffic problems
Letters: June 14, 2006 - 06/14/2006
Light rail version of Purple Line is preferred over heavy rail, ICC

Index Keywords: transit