Sunday, March 04, 2018

Much more Purple Line work in Bethesda, Chevy Chase this week

Construction on the Purple Line light rail between Bethesda and New Carrollton is really going to ramp up in downtown Bethesda and Chevy Chase, starting tomorrow. A tower crane is scheduled to arrive as soon as Monday, March 5, and will be erected on the Elm Street side of the Purple Line station project (where the Apex Building was, before being demolished recently).

According to Purple Line Transit Partners, the entity in charge of the project, the tower crane arrival and assembly will not disrupt traffic patterns on nearby roads (which is pretty unusual, if you're familiar with usually-disruptive tower crane assemblies), and will be completed by March 16 (strange again, as most tower crane assemblies are completed in 1-2 days).

Also starting Monday, "tree-clearing and grubbing" (a.k.a. clearcutting of forest) will begin on the section of the Georgetown Branch/Capital Crescent Trail between the Air Rights Building and Montgomery Avenue (at East-West Highway).

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope the noisest work will be in front of Ajay Bhatt's house. He's the one who filed lawsuits which held up the purple line for years.

Anonymous said...

Yes, that would be karma.

Anonymous said...

I am curious why they need a tower crane to build an underground station. I wonder if this crane is also intended to be used to build the Carr 30 story apartment tower and the 22 story office tower, as well as the south Metro entrance. As I recall, it was reported that the first task for Carr after the demo was to build the “tube” that would house the Purple Line. This tube is mostly under the future towers, so it will have very deep foundation to support the high rises.

If this is true, I suspect the crane will be much taller than the nearby one that is erecting the 15 story 4747 Bethesda building, and shared by all nearby concurrent construction to reduce the cost.

Anonymous said...

"'tree-clearing and grubbing' (a.k.a. clearcutting of forest)"

The trees and vines along the CCT between Wisconsin Avenue and East-West Highway, many of which are invasive species, /= "forest" and removing them /= "clearcutting".

Anonymous said...

@8:31AM & @9:23AM -- Karma would be that homeowner dude going on a shooting spree