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The Purple Line: More Pitfalls Than Potential

Purple Line opponents show the scale of trains on the Capital Crescent Trail. (By Mark Gail -- The Washington Post)

Washington Post, Sunday, July 20, 2008; Page B08

Mark Gabriele, Letter to the Editor

A June 29 Metro article aptly described the proposed light-rail Purple Line linking Bethesda with New Carrollton. As a community leader whose neighborhood would be directly affected by the Purple Line, I have concerns that have developed as we have participated in the planning process over the past three years:

· The Purple Line isn't going to solve any transit problem.

· The Purple Line would create a number of problems in our    neighborhood (and, we believe, in other neighborhoods, as well).

· The Purple Line is going to cost a lot of money to build.

The Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) estimates of Purple Line ridership predict that 80 to 90 percent of riders would come from existing transit services. Only a few thousand cars would be taken off the road -- and that number would be spread over the distance between New Carrollton and Bethesda. Because the Purple Line would share roads with automobile traffic through some congested areas, it wouldn't be much faster.

According to the MTA, the Purple Line would not significantly reduce traffic; what it would do is adversely affect the proposed Green Trail, which would make it safer and easier to bike longer distances around our area.

Claims of "social justice" benefits to low-income riders are specious.  We have not heard how much a ticket might cost, but it typically is more expensive to ride a train than a bus. Insofar as the proposed Purple Line is almost certainly going to be a light-rail system, it would replace bus lines, and people who ride buses would probably be forced to pay more. Residents and commuters currently have a functional bus system along the planned route, but a light-rail system would stop less frequently than buses, making it less convenient to ride. Compounding that, rents would rise in areas close to Purple Line stops, resulting in gentrification and the forcing out of lower-income residents.

The Purple Line would also cause problems for some neighborhoods -- mine included -- and these problems are real, not simply instances of "not in my back yard" syndrome. Speaking only for my own area, in East Silver Spring, the proposed alignment would result in a widening of Wayne Avenue -- a residential street -- and that would in turn support greater volumes of car traffic (in addition to the 180-foot-long Purple Line trains). Along a one-mile stretch of Wayne Avenue, MTA planners have failed, despite meetings and written requests, to address traffic management concerns for three schools, two churches, a senior citizens home, a busy shopping center and a 1,690-space public parking structure. In the Silver Spring business district, scarce street parking would be eliminated to make way for the trains, which would affect business along Bonifant Street.

By anyone's definition, $1.5 billion for a 16-mile transit project is a lot of money. Perhaps it is conventional wisdom that any investment in mass transit is a good investment. There is certainly a great deal of political support, and commercial developers are all in favor of transit stops near their properties. That's clever on their part. But buying an expensive tram that would run from New Carrollton to Bethesda in just about the same time as you could make the trip today via Metrorail -- while wreaking havoc on neighborhoods all along its path -- doesn't seem wise.

-- Mark Gabriele

Silver Spring

The writer is president of the Seven Oaks Evanswood Citizens' Association.

Continued Below:

Comment - Continued

Looking across the River, Trail supporters followed the community's efforts to get rail transit tunneled underground in Tyson's Corner (see News Articles -- Tysons Corner).   

Of particular interest --, efforts to BLOCK tunneling there involve many of the same corporate players that are involved in planning to put the light rail on the Capital Crescent Trail.   

For example, Bechtel Corporation performed the preliminary EIS for the light rail on the Capital Crescent Trail.  But Bechtel was told that if they performed the subsequent EIS, they would not be able to bid on construction of the Purple Line.  So Parsons Brinckerhoff is doing the EIS this time around.

Cross the river to Tysons Corner: 

Bechtel Corporation and Parsons Brinckerhoff lead a consortium that has received a contract -- without bidding -- to build an above ground rail in Tysons Corner, and this consortium is trying to block efforts to open up the bidding to include the possibility of tunneling the Tysons project.  If the bidding is opened up, Bechtel could lose the contract to another consortium. 

Engineering plans for tunneling already have been submitted, and these plans reveal that the cost of tunneling may actually be lower than above ground rail. 

Meanwhile, the Bechtel project remains shrouded in secrecy.  If bidding is opened up to include the possibility of tunneling, Bechtel will have to reveal the true costs of its project in order to compete.

There are concerns in the community that Bechtel , in its secrecy, has not accounted for all the costs of above ground rail, and that to keep costs down, they will downgrade some elements of the project.

"There are some real significant issues of secrecy, accountability, conflict of interest and failure to protect the public trust," said Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.  (See "Rail Project for Dulles Raises Concerns".)

"We're very fearful that they've [Bechtel] been able to use the cloak of secrecy [that the public-private act] provides to prevent public penetration of the contractual aspects of this project," said Gerald E. Connolly (D), chairman of the Fairfax County board.

Members are especially apprehensive about "change orders," or alterations in the project's design for budgetary or engineering reasons. "We're going to be handed a bill and told to ante up," he said.

Fairfax County board members also expressed concern about having key design elements peeled away in negotiations to meet federal cost guidelines. Supervisor T. Dana Kauffman (D-Lee) said one early cost-saving measure that surfaced was a shrinking of pedestrian walkways "into glorified cattle chutes."

"Just look north," said Kauffman, referring to Bechtel's management of Boston's $14.6 billion "Big Dig" highway project, originally budgeted at $7.7 billion. In 2004, Massachusetts officials filed a $146 million lawsuit against Bechtel and Parsons Brinckerhoff, alleging that the contractors concealed actual cost estimates from the state to keep the project on track."

Similar concerns have been expressed by Trail supporters with regard to the surface level, light rail Purple Line plans. 

Trail supporters are skeptical that the true costs of the light rail project are being revealed, and that promises to ameliorate the negative effects of the light rail cannot and/or will not be kept due to the physical limitations of the right-of-way and due to cost constraints.

There are other parallels between Tysons Corner and the Trail.  The plans for above ground rail at Tysons have been in the works for some time, but it is only recently that the full community awakened to an awareness of the destructive impact that above ground rail would have on Tysons.

"It just seems to me and every person I've ever talked to that putting it aboveground makes no sense, aesthetically and logically and every way you can think of," said Irv Auerbach, a longtime McLean resident and member of a task force drawing up a master plan for Tysons. 

"It just makes more sense to go underground  .... At stake is the future look and feel of Tysons..... Fairfax leaders say Tysons needs to become a more vibrant and pedestrian-friendly place .... even those involved in the project for years struggle to explain how it has arrived at a point that is so marked by confusion, misgivings and ironies",  (Post, "On the Road to Dulles, Confusion and Anst").

Trail supporters predict that the Tysons Corner debacle will repeat itself in Maryland -- if officials continue to ignore the overwhelming opposition to constructing the Purple Line on the Capital Trail. 

Click on News Articles, and then scroll down for articles on Tysons Corner.

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