MONTGOMERY COUNTY BRT COST EXPLODES TO $10 BILLION

COUNTY OFFICIALS

OPENLY PLOT TO

MAKE TRAFFIC

33% WORSE FOR

AUTO COMMUTERS

The cost estimate for Montgomery County's unpopular Bus Rapid Transit plan has exploded to $10,000,000,000, according to county Master Planner Larry Cole.  Ironically, it was Cole who humiliated BRT-obsessed county politicians earlier this year, when he announced the county did not have sufficient ridership for a BRT system.  After keeping quiet for a while - and surely receiving a "talking to" behind closed doors (how else to explain his embarrassing about-face from naysayer to "let's do this?") - Cole is now speaking to reporters.

With a BRT vehicle that requires 50 minutes to crawl 15 miles, a $10 billion BRT price tag, not a single penny in financing, and a county slouching towards fiscal disaster with an unresolved structural deficit, surely officials are ready to end the Fantasy Island talk of BRT, right?

Wrong.

"The bus, Boss!  The bus!"

Instead, they are pressing forward.  With developers pulling the strings for BRT behind the scenes (it will allow them to build town centers in suburban and rural areas), politicians beholden to them have little choice.

Now several officials, including Cole, are talking openly about sabotaging the county's already-failing highway network for automobile commuters, to save a few bucks on BRT lanes.

Their plan is to steal lanes from cars on Route 355 and Georgia Avenue, and make them BRT-only lanes.  This would reduce highway capacity on both roads by at least 33%.

Both Rockville Pike and Georgia Avenue are currently jammed full, and move at a crawl from red light to red light, during rush hour.

Amazingly, Cole and other county officials are attempting to claim - with straight faces, no less - that reducing capacity by 33% will have no impact on existing automobile traffic.

Even more amazingly, local media continue to allow them to make these Fantasy Island claims.

What planet are these people living on?

Have they ever driven the roads they're talking about?

I've been on both in rush hour more times than I can count, and can definitively say that taking even one lane away would be absolutely catastrophic.

"Welcome to Fantasy Island"

Blissfully removed from reality, Cole continues his salesman spiel to Kate Jacobson of The Examiner, telling her chopping down capacity 33% on highways will have no impact because "there are more people on the buses and there are less vehicles on the road."

Huh?  I've got Ricardo Montalban on Line 1, and Rod Serling on Line 2 here, man!

Mr. Cole: welcome to reality.  Welcome to the world.  We'll try to get you up to speed here.

Across Montgomery County, 85-90% of residents drive, and only 10-15% use public transit.  No suburban area like Montgomery County has ever been successful in "getting people out of their cars," with the exception of Communist China, who did it by force.

Ironically, as we found out a few weeks ago, Communist Chinese officials are advising the county on their BRT plan.  Nice PR move, guys.

But the bottom line is that Mr. Cole's statement is false.

One motive behind the plot to steal lanes from drivers, and make their commutes even worse?  A misguided belief that they can use pain to force you to stop selfishly driving, and board their $10B bus for a two hour commute.  In other words, artificially gin up ridership for a bus that Mr. Cole himself declared there is insufficient ridership for.

Cole was against BRT before he was for it!

He's not alone, though.  Two other county officials have endorsed the "punish drivers" plan.  And, get this:  they're going to punish you, the citizen, who pays their salaries!

Senior BRT planner David Anspacher told the Washington Post this:

"When folks see buses running down Rockville Pike while traffic is stopped, that will be our best marketing."

Thumbing your nose at 90% of county taxpayers is a popular pasttime among officials, apparently.

Kate Alexander of The Gazette reported last week that Planning Commissioner Casey Anderson declared "the county was no longer going to be in the business of trying to accomodate the demand for single-occupancy vehicles, and that transit was preferred."

Wow.  I'm afraid "radical" may be too weak of a term to describe Mr. Anderson's statement.

Let me get this straight:  the county is shirking its primary transportation responsibility we pay it to execute - maintaining a functioning highway system for 85-90% of residents?

Can we see the data that proves the fantasy assertions of no impact on auto traffic?  Of course not.

To top it off, three "public meetings" are being held this week.  But if you live in Bethesda or Clarksburg or Potomac or Burtonsville, ah, well, you're not really invited.

That's because the meetings are only at Montgomery Blair HS, Shady Grove Training Center (the Shady Grove what?!  Where's that?!), and Wheaton Library.  All super-convenient for residents of the remaining 80% of the county, right?

Get the sense that they don't really care what your opinion is?

But they do care about you paying for BRT.  With no financing in place, BRT taxes will cost many Bethesda residents $1000+ annually in new taxes.  And they won't even get to ride it, because it doesn't even go south into DC!

All this for a bus that goes 15 miles in 50 minutes, and will still take longer than your car, even if they artificially make traffic jams even worse.

All aboard the Emperor's New Bus.  Next stop:  The Twilight Zone.