OVERNIGHT "SOIL BORING" COULD DISTURB DOWNTOWN BETHESDA RESIDENTS MARCH 4-15 - EXCLUSIVE!

If you live near the Capital Crescent Trail tunnel between Bethesda Row and Waverly Street in downtown Bethesda, there could be some noisy nights ahead in March.

A Baltimore company, E2CR, Inc., plans to perform exploratory soil borings inside the tunnel between 9:00 PM and 5:00 AM from March 5-15.  You know, the hours most people are trying to sleep, right?

The company has requested a noise waiver from Montgomery County to perform the work.  If you have questions or complaints about the proposed work, call Steve Martin of the Montgomery County Department of the Environment at 240-777-7746 this week.

No decibel level has been given for the work, so it is unclear just how loud it will be.  Obviously, it is a level that will exceed the nighttime rules.

The work is related to the future construction of the Purple Line light rail line between Bethesda and New Carrollton.  My understanding is that they are doing this at night so that trail users will be unaffected during the day.

Blasting in the day!

Boring in the night!

What will happen next?

TIME TO TACKLE INFLATED INFRASTRUCTURE COSTS

COZY RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN 

POLITICIANS, UNIONS, CONSTRUCTION FIRMS 

DRIVING TAXPAYERS INTO POORHOUSE, 

STIFLING VITAL PROJECTS

One of the biggest arguments for substandard transit projects like Montgomery County's proposed BRT system, and not building needed highways is, "We just don't have the money."

That's partly true, because politicians keep spending transportation funds on the folks who donate to their campaigns.

But there's a fundamental flaw to that argument, and it came to my attention recently.

Reading about a new interstate highway in the deep South, that will extend several hundred miles through three states, I was flabbergasted to find that the ambitious project's total cost was going to be less than what Maryland taxpayers are paying for the few miles of the InterCounty Connector.

As a fan of underground subways, I wonder why areas like ours have stopped building them.  We're told that light rail (which I also like, by the way) is a cheaper alternative.

Initially, you might think so.  New York City is building a subway extension of 8 miles for $17 billion.  In contrast, Maryland has estimated the much longer Purple Line to cost around $2.2 billion as a surface light rail line.

But wait a minute, Toronto is building the 15.5 mile Englinton-Scarborough Crosstown subway line for about $8 billion.

Ironically, the ESC subway was meant to be a light rail line.  But Toronto Mayor Tom Ford wisely scrapped that plan.

Subways are a far more civilized form of urban transit, particularly in dense areas.  They help create world-class transit systems when stops are placed in the right spots.  Subways can arrive beneath destinations, whereas light rail can be blockaded by surface obstacles around buildings.  Consider the experience of arriving within the Verizon Center complex or Prince Georges Plaza, compared with remote outposts like the White Flint and Shady Grove stations.

And subways do not require all of the surface clutter and debris needed to operate light rail systems.  Not to mention that subway speeds blow away bus or light rail rapid transit.

We're unlikely to match the transit ridership rates of New York City until we have a system that covers the same amount of territory the Big Apple's does.

And we won't reduce gridlock until we build our master plan highways like the Rockville Freeway, M-83 Midcounty Highway Extended, the Outer Beltway, and the Northern Parkway.

Opponents say we can't afford to do it.

It turns out that's hogwash.

Why does it cost so much to build infrastructure here?  Besides nuisance lawsuits permitted by federal law, the driving force behind costs is our politicians' cozy and unethical relationships with all of the players needed to build anything.  Requiring not only union labor, but with an inflated wage, causes costs to skyrocket.  Design and build firms, like union leaders, give generously to politicians' campaigns.  And those politicians are equally generous with the taxpayers' money, approving design and construction projects with overinflated budgets.  And as we've witnessed with projects like Strathmore and the Silver Spring Transit Center, those same tight relationships seem to prevent elected officials from taking any serious, punitive measures to avoid cost overruns when projects go wrong.

While a project like the Rockville Freeway could be built for well under $1 billion under the current cost structure, it is well past time to tackle the outrageous infrastructure prices that are keeping our region from moving forward.  That includes sewer and utility improvements, too!  Even FDR believed that unions hold no right to bankrupt the public.

For Montgomery County in particular, it has been devastating.  It doesn't have to be.  We have the power to take action now to reduce the cost of building infrastructure.  What we need is the leadership that can actually take on this challenge.

DC MOVES FORWARD WITH H STREET STREETCAR AS MONTGOMERY COUNTY GOES OFF RAILS WITH BRT

Big streetcar news was announced quietly on a Saturday by the DC Department of Transportation:  DDOT has awarded a partnership of M.C. Dean, Inc. and Facchina Construction the design-construction contract for the H Street-Benning Road streetcar line.

Dean-Facchina will build the western and eastern termini of the route, the overhead catenary that will deliver power to the streetcars, and the Benning Road-26th Street, NE car barn.

Work will begin immediately once DDOT issues the paperwork, pending council approval, according to Director Terry Bellamy.  The timing will keep the streetcar on schedule to start service in late 2013.

If you're a streetcar fan, you've got to be excited just to hear a phrase like "car barn" again.

Much like the Purple Line (and at one time, the light rail concept of the now-ruined Corridor Cities Transitway) here in Montgomery County, the H Street streetcar is a targeted expenditure, bringing the benefits of rail transit to serve a route expected to grow in density.

Contrast that with the scattershot boondoggle known as Montgomery County BRT, which duplicates existing Metro routes, lacks the density to support it according to the county's own master planner, is slower and costlier than rail, and has no responsible financing.

With BRT, the county is literally going off the rails.  And wasting money that could have been better spent on a light rail CCT, on its own right-of-way as originally planned.  Or purchasing more Red Line or MARC capacity.  Or funding a new parking lot at the Boyds MARC station, where more commuters actually want to take the train, but have no parking!

Or cooperating with DC on restarting the streetcar line from Georgetown out to Glen Echo.

We still have the right-of-way for the whole Glen Echo route; do we have the leadership to create a modern transportation system in Montgomery County?

BRT rush-to-ruin tells serious transit advocates we don't.

CORRIDOR CITIES TRANSITWAY: THE EMPEROR'S NEW BUS

FOLLY EXPOSED:

15 MILES IN 50 MINUTES

COST? 
$828,000,000+!

Another Robert Dyer @ Bethesda Row Exclusive!!!

Is it time for a new season of Last Comic Standing?  The Montgomery County Government sent out a press release Friday - or was it a draft of a standup comedy routine?

Touting Governor Martin O'Malley's approval of Bus Rapid Transit as the preferred mode for the Corridor Cities Transitway, it also included the first public citing of the estimated speed of the new service.

And if they keep this up, they're going to put Jerry Seinfeld out of business.

Now remember, the CCT was supposed to be light rail.  The County Council went on the record saying it had to be light rail.

And at a council debate in 2010, residents of Clarksburg warned the council that if the ride from Clarksburg to Shady Grove Metro on the CCT was too long, no one would waste time using it, and the whole project would be a waste of taxpayer money.

It turns out our elected officials have been dishonest on each of those points and promises.

Ladies and gentlemen, the travel time of the rapid bus CCT from Clarksburg to Shady Grove will be:

49 MINUTES

49 minutes!

Much like the proposed countywide BRT system, this is a complete and utter boondoggle.

Unlike the local media, which trumpeted the underwhelming CCT announcement with no skepticism or critical analysis, I immediately did some simple research on Google Maps.

Once I could stop laughing, that is.

First, I asked Google Maps how long it would take me to drive from Clarksburg to Shady Grove Metro.

Answer:  23 minutes by car.

So, how would you make the trip?  23 minutes, or 49?  Do you even have to think about it?

Wait, it gets even more hysterical!

What if you drove a few blocks south on 355 from Clarksburg, and conveniently parked your car at the Milestone Park and Ride lot, and took the Route 55 bus to Shady Grove?

33 minutes, says Google Maps.

So let's just consider this, folks:

Today, without spending a dime, there are driving options of 23 minutes, and transit options of 33 minutes.

Your county executive and council are proposing to spend $828 million (and you know that's going to increase as every other capital project does), for a bus that makes the same trip in... 49 minutes.

Am I making too much sense here, people?

Is that the poster stepchild of boondoggles and government waste or not?

What kind of spell is the local media under, that they accept this malarkey with no intellectual curiosity whatsoever?

The county also stated that a BRT trip from Metropolitan Grove to Shady Grove will take 33 minutes.

By car, it is 13 minutes!

This is downright crazy!

What's going on here?

The bottom line is that the council is putting its developer buddies ahead of fiscal responsibility, and the citizens of Montgomery County.

As you can tell from the numbers, the CCT will be anything but "rapid transit."  It will provide no meaningful benefit to citizens, while drawing scarce transportation money away from critical projects like the Purple Line, Midcounty Highway Extended (M-83) and the Rockville Freeway.

The M-83 serves the same purpose as the CCT for upcounty residents, but for less cost and shorter travel time.  Like the Rockville Freeway, the M-83 is far more likely to receive federal funding than the CCT; both highways would carry many times the number of commuters daily, a critical data point for winning federal funds.

We just heard Sunday about the increasingly bleak financing prospects of the Purple Line.  Why, in that context, would we waste a billion dollars on the CCT?

Simple.  Those developer buddies of the council I referred to earlier.

The sprawl of Science City cannot be fully built unless the CCT is built as well.

So you can understand why they would push forward with a BRT CCT, that any intelligent person with common sense can recognize is a complete disaster.

They just have to get it built, or the developers will cut off their campaign donations.

But if the developers want to build, they should pay for the CCT themselves.

This council is pushing a new model of financing, where the infrastructure burden switches from the profiteering developers, to you, the taxpayer.

They've rammed through 3 developer tax cuts just in this term of office.  One alone switched $72 million in tax burden from developers to residents and business owners.  Now they're working with the Planning Department, to reduce the amount developers have to spend to compensate for the traffic burden they add to county roads with each megaproject.

Beyond the financing issues, the BRT travel time proves why the CCT should have been a rail line.  By comparison, the MTA light rail that runs alongside the Jones Falls Expressway, makes its rush hour, inbound trip from Hunt Valley to the center of Baltimore in only 33 minutes.  That trip is 17 miles, 2 more miles than the CCT's route! The superiority of rail is obvious.

Rapid buses simply cannot provide the needed efficiency - to attract the needed ridership - to support the costly service.

But much like Metro in Tysons Corner, they're ramming it through anyway.  Do they expect people to use Metro at Tysons?  From the location of the stops, to the utter lack of commuter parking lots, the clear answer is, No!

The same Developer First logic is prevailing here.  Get something built that we can call a CCT, so the developers can make money.

Isn't it time for the media, the business community and the citizens to stand up and say the Emperor has no clothes?

WHY CAN'T WE EXAMINE

THE MTA CAPITAL CRESCENT

TRAIL REPORT?

State Planners Say "No!" to Trail in Bethesda

Purple Line Tunnel, But Where's Their Report?

The Maryland Transit Administration has told the Montgomery County Council that the Capital Crescent Trail should not continue to utilize the B&O Railroad Tunnel in Bethesda when the Purple Line is built.

But where is this written report? There is an article on the issue online from The Washington Post. But apparently we the people are not allowed to read the actual report. I have searched the MTA website, and spent half-an hour combing through the County Council website, only to come up empty handed.

I like to be able to analyze a report before judging it. Of course a tunnel alignment would be more expensive, but how thorough was the analysis?

This is an ongoing problem I've discussed before: lack of transparency in the county government. Despite all internet advances, county finances and line by line budget items remain unavailable in real time online.

As far as the new surface route for the trail, the current plan is to divert from the CCT as it and the Purple Line approach the Bethesda Row station. The trail would be moved onto a strip of 47th Street, then a right turn onto Leland St. and (after crossing Wisconsin Avenue) on to the right-hand parking lane on westbound Bethesda Avenue.

That will bring joggers, walkers and cyclists to the intersection of Bethesda and Woodmont Avenue, where they currently cross to regain the trail.

This does create a safety issue, as trail users will have to navigate a busy state highway to get to the next section. That is why trail advocates have called for the tunnel option.

The surface route concept doesn't sound too bad, and will certainly be safer than riding through a deserted tunnel.

Once the trail, Purple Line station, Capital Bikeshare stations, and new Bethesda Metro Center south entrance are completed, Bethesda will have nearly as many transportation options as a European city.

Council staff director Glenn Orlin suggested building the new trail route in FY 2015, so that trail users will not face an interruption when the tunnel closes for Purple Line construction in FY 2016, in his Memorandum to the Council.

But I think the MTA tunnel report should have been made available on both the MTA and Council websites as soon as it was delivered to the council.

There are many opinions on this and other Purple Line matters, and the people have a right to know what's going on.

PRAISE FOR METRO,

DC STREETCARS

FROM

CANADA, EH

You think you've got it bad! Metro is in serious trouble. Endless track work will continue indefinitely, yet all the work done so far has yielded no tangible or quantifiable benefit discernable to riders. Stations will be closed again on weekends. Riders are returning to cars in droves, even as ridership rises in other cities.

Metro's solution? Charge more than it costs most people to drive for a daily round trip. That should win people over!

I still love our Metro system and its distinctive architecture. It is actually a real subway inside most of DC, which has become a lost art in transit. When did planners suddenly decide that underground subways were obsolete? They allow convenient routing through developed areas without demolitions, offer optimal station placement, travel faster than light rail, create no mess of wires and equipment on urban streets, and are protected from bad weather.

The fact is that developer-beholden politicians don't want to spend subway money, even as they want to facilitate transit-oriented-development everywhere possible. This is how you end up with BRT and light rail. And a Metro Silver Line with no parking for actual human beings who might use it.

So it's not surprising to hear negative reactions to a new subway proposed in Toronto. But you might be surprised to hear praise from Canada for the DC area's rail transit system.

A gent named Peter Witt responded to a comment section debate on a Toronto website with this advice:

"Try visiting Washington, D.C., a metro region the size of the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) where they are BUILDING FIVE STREETCAR LINES IN A CITY WHOSE SUBWAY SYSTEM KICKS THE TTC'S (Toronto Subway's) (fill in the blank). Aargh."

Sounds like things could be worse. While advocating for completion of our highway and transit system, sometimes you have to stop and marvel at our Metro system and Capital Beltway: impressive achievements that apparently could not be built today.

VETERANS AND

TRANSIT

Last month, when writing about ridership on Norfolk's Tide light rail being twice the projected number, I suggested it might have something to do with the large military population there.

While most light rail systems across the country are successful, the Tide service is the biggest success so far (assuming planners didn't lowball the projections, which is unlikely, since low numbers don't win federal money). So the large number of men and women who have served in Germany and Japan, for example, might be one explanation for the above-average performance.

The reason I think this hypothesis is valid is that these servicemembers have experienced the convenience of the more advanced transit systems found in European and Asian cities. So when they return here, while our systems (with the possible exceptions of cities like New York and Chicago) seem quaint by comparison, they are more likely to give them a chance.

Further proof of my theory was found in yesterday's Core Values column by WTOP commentator Chris Core. He printed a letter from retired Air Force Col. Chris Krisinger, who had high praise for Munich's frankly incredible transit system. Noting the seamless mobility offered by Munich's S-Bahn (think the Purple Line or MTA Light Rail) and U-Bahn (subway), he underscored the need for convenient rail service to Dulles Airport.

Alas, the sensible and world-class layout described by Col. Krisinger ("the 's-bahn' train arrives at the airport in an underground station that brings passengers right up in between the two main terminals") has already been rejected for the Dulles Metro station.

In fact, the so-called airport station was never under the Dulles terminal, and that made the cheaper compromise station the right choice. Had the argument been over an actual underground station at Dulles, I would have written letters to editors and promoted that option here. Nothing would tell visitors that America leads the world more evocatively than rising into the airport itself upon an escalator from the train platform.

Ironically, Core's original column was boosting a Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority board member's idea of a smaller, Aero Train line that would restore the original vision by taking Dulles passengers from an even more affordable station further away directly into the terminal.

Given the fiscal and practical realities of the moment, that idea is a good one, but it seems to have been discarded by the board.

The truth is that Metro to Dulles is all about the Benjamins for wealthy developers. The stations have no parking, which means a massive portion of potential ridership will be lost from the get-go. The Tysons mall station... ...is not in the mall. That says third world, not world class. And the afterthought treatment given to the station theoretically the raison d'etre for the whole Metro line? These three facts speak for themselves.

So we won't have a world-class Dulles Metro system (but the skyline view of already-impressive Tysons Corner from the elevated trestle will be fantastic at night).

But Col. Krisinger's letter does offer proof of my theory - our military population, such as those commuting to BRAC sites like Walter Reed, Fort Belvoir and the Mark Center, are more likely to use transit than the average American worker.

The question is, can our politicians "grow up" and deliver the world's best transit and highway systems for the world's best men and women in uniform?