Save The Trail Petition

Testimony

Testimony of Pam Browning, Organizer

Save the Trail Petition 

Council of Governments

May 2009

Mr. Chairman and Transportation Planning Board Members,

My name is Pam Browning and I am the Organizer of the Petition to Save the Trail. 

The Petition has gathered over 17,000 signatures, asking that the Purple Line be built elsewhere other than along the Capital Crescent Trail, or be tunneled underground.

The Capital Crescent Trail is one of the most popular Trails in the nation. 

Studies document that as of 2006, there were more than 10,000 uses of the Trail between Bethesda and Silver Spring on a weekly basis.  That number has grown even higher in the intervening 3 years.

Because the Trail between Bethesda and Silver Spring is an essential link in a circuit of regional Trails, Petition signers are from all over the Region:  While 40% are from the Bethesda-Chevy Chase area, 60% come from other areas, including 20% from Silver Spring, Kensington and Rockville;  19% from Washington, DC;  and 9% from Virginia.

More than 1,500 trail supporters have written emails to Governor O’Malley and 500 have written their own postcard messages, opposing the Purple Line along the Trail. 

Trail supporters are not anti-transit.  We support Bus Rapid Transit -- but there are better routes than along the Trail. 

And we are not opposed to rail, but overwhelmingly, trail users believe that if the Purple Line is going to be a rail line, then it should be a Metrorail, not a light rail, at least in the segment connecting the two legs of Metro's Red Line -- to create a seamless circuit that would significantly improve the Metro system. 

This Metrorail connection should be either tunneled underground or built along the Beltway from Silver Spring to Bethesda Medical Center, where BRAC is bringing thousands of new employees, patients and visitors to the new National Naval Medical Center. 

In fact, during the BRAC comment period, more than 500 comments were submitted requesting this seamless Metrorail connection. 

In 2003, years before BRAC was announced, the Montgomery County Planning Board found this Beltway Metro loop plan, which was created and recommended by WMATA staff, to be feasible, and voted unanimously that this plan should be studied further if the light rail did not receive construction funding back in 2003. 

And yet, there has been no further study, even since BRAC was announced.

A light rail along the Trail would be an environmental disaster.  According to the MTA’s Environmental Impact Statement, essentially all of the trees in the right of way would be destroyed.  Trains would run 10’ from the Trail!

And despite costing $1.8 billion, a light rail along the Trail would do nothing to improve Metro's infrastructure and service.

In fact, light rail, with its different cars, rails, and maintenance, would compete for funding with Metro, and suck dollars away from Metro.