Save The Trail Coalition

Testimony -- December 10, 2009

before the Montgomery County Planning Board

Terri Lukas, Chevy Chase West Neighbborhood Association

My name is Terri Lukas, I live in Chevy Chase West and represent the Chevy Chase West Neighborhood  Association,  an unincorporated area of the County, made up of approximately 400 households. It is bordered by Wisconsin Ave. on the east, Hunt Avenue on the south, Nottingham Drive and Norwood Park on the North and Little Falls Park on the West.  The western end of Drummond Avenue, not in the Village of Drummond is part of Chevy Chase West.   We drive cars, use mass transportation and are in favor of expanding mass transportation alternatives. 

We took a position against building the light rail on the Georgetown Branch of the Capital Crescent Trail for a variety of reasons, but principally because it sacrifices the Capital Crescent Trail for an ill-conceived mass transit project that will not reduce congestion in our community of Bethesda Chevy Chase.   The County and backers of this light rail project accused us of elitism for this position, claimed that the Trail can co-exist  with the light rail project, and won the argument with the Governor.          

So I am here today, making the effort to move on, to find out how the County intends to live up to its promise that a trail can co-exist with two high speed trains and still resemble what a trail is commonly thought to be: a relatively tranquil  place of transit for a variety of pedestrians and non-motorized bikers.   

I read through the functional plan expecting to find some concrete information to answer my questions of how exactly this promise is going to be kept.   Instead of finding answers, perhaps some numbers, perhaps some measurements drawn to scale, I find nothing here that even resembles what a “plan” in common parlance is supposed to contain.   Instead, I find more dreamy architectural drawings that MTA has been passing around to deflect criticism of its plan and photos of light rail trains in other parts of the country or world.  A lot of money was wasted on artful formatting and printing of this document in multiple colors, but none to add any meaningful information that ordinary citizens can understand.

I submit that this functional plan is not a plan at all, but another PR piece from the County,  peppered with faux techno-planning speak that ASSERTS that all promises made to the communities will be kept but with no evidence presented that they can be.    I do not have the time to point out all the absurdities of this so called plan.  I offer the following bits, relating to the geographic area that I am most familiar with, that part of the Trail that currently extends from Bethesda to Chevy Chase Lake.  Beginning on p. 9, the following are posited as two “ characteristics and objectives” for this area of the proposed project, I quote:   

• Pedestrian experience and trail access [will be the] focus of design efforts  (verb added)
• Will reinforce Bethesda CBD as pedestrian priority area

Following these statements, one might expect to find some notion of how they are to be met in fact.  Instead, what one finds ( p. 12, map 2), are aerial photos of the proposed light rail route, perhaps meaningful to an eagle’s eye, but not to a human’s.  

The next section (p. 13, table 2), contains a comparison of “current” right of way widths to “prior” widths, as if these phrases are supposed to reveal anything about how space is to be used to build this project.  They don’t. They are meaningless phrases, as I suspect they are meant to be to everyone but County lawyers and commercial lobbyists.  There are no references back to the “characteristics/objectives” noted. There is no information in this functional plan about how these objectives are to be realized.  

The one piece of information that I did find in this plan, that actually was meaningful to me was a “note” below Table 2, p. 13, (quote):

              “Trail is elevated above rail vehicles from the west end of the tunnel to the east”.  

This “note” refers to the notorious engineering feature of the MTA’s light rail plan that channels trail users into an enclosed tunnel within a tunnel presumably suspended from the ceiling over the high speed trains, as they enter Bethesda CBD.   So a Trail becomes an obstacle course, a pedestrian experience is walking through a cage through a tunnel over speeding trains …. And every other unsubstantiated assertion contained in this “plan” is to be believed by the citizens who are asked to foot this 1.7 billion dollar folly ….?      

To sum up, this plan isn’t right; it isn’t even wrong; it delivers nothing in the way of reconciling all the promises made about fitting two high speed trains and a trail into a space that now contains a trail, and one that winds through established neighborhoods and urban structures.  It is one more deception by the County about this project and my testimony today is going to put it into the permanent record.   

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