Save The Trail Petition

Testimony before the

COG Transportation Planning Board

July 17 , 2009

Rolf Sinclair, Chevy Chase, Maryland

I am one of several hundred thousand users of the Capital Crescent Trail (I repeat, several hundred thousand) who are strongly opposed to its essential destruction by a surface light rail along the portion from Bethesda to Silver Spring.

A number of things about the Purple Line are not clear. It is a 1985 plan, and transportation requirements have changed greatly since then. The estimated ridership is constantly shifting. The cost increases as we watch, and the subsidy to operate the Purple Line will be crippling.

But it is clear that a surface light rail will effectively destroy a key part of the Capital Crescent Trail, from Bethesda to Rock Creek Park to Silver Spring.

Remember how Justice Douglas saved the abandoned C&O Canal from becoming a highway? Now that right of way has become the most popular National Park in the USA.

Now we have the same problem – saving what was an abandoned railroad right of way and has already become part of Montgomery County’s most popular park.

If it does turn out to be necessary and wise to build the planned Purple Line, please face up to the cost of doing it properly and put it underground in this sensitive portion.

As it stands, the proposed Purple Line demonstrates weakness of vision at a time when we need a mass transit infrastructure that is far more robust and flexible for the Greater Washington region. It is easy to make fiscal stress an excuse for not standing ground against schemes that degrade what little we have left of accessible green urban space, and that fracture existing communities. Please return to the drawing board.