Image: If built, a Purple Line tunnel beneath Wayne Avenue would wipe out three houses just east of Mansfield Road. Courtesy of MTA.
A tunnel that would burrow the Purple Line beneath downtown Silver Spring and the Seven Oaks/Evanswood area would mean no station at the hood’s new library, the state transit administration reported.
If constructed, a tunnel under downtown Silver Spring and parts east of that would give the planned light-rail line nearly a clear path between the Silver Spring Transit Center and the Long Branch area, last week’s report read.
That is, the Purple Line won’t have to deal with automobile and pedestrian traffic in the downtown area as it jets between Bethesda and New Carrollton. An off-road rail line through Seven Oaks also might encourage drivers to stick with double-wide Wayne Avenue and off residential Dale Drive, area residents believe.
However, state transit reps previously said they won’t install expensive underground stations along the Purple Line’s route. Tunneling beneath downtown Silver Spring would nix a proposed station on Fenton Street between Bonifant Street and Wayne, where Silver Spring’s new library will be built.
The closest Purple Line stop to the new library then would be three blocks away, at the transit center on Colesville Road and Wayne. Without stations at the new library and on Wayne at Dale Drive, as the transit administration proposes, the number of daily one-way trips between the transit center and Long Branch would drop by up to 1,200 rides, the report claimed.
On the flip side, eliminating the library station reduces travel time through downtown Silver Spring by 3.6 minutes. That shorter trip offsets the tunnel’s $352 million price tag, giving the project favorable cost-effectiveness grades needed to score federal funds, the state said.
Still, the transit administration’s report warned that “the ability of an option to meet the cost-effectiveness index is immaterial if that option is beyond the financial capacity of the state of Maryland.” (Translation: The “it’ll pay for itself” argument might not wash with state or federal bean counters.)
There’s also the matter of how much private property will meet the wrecking ball in order to clear the Purple Line’s path. If the line rolls at street level through downtown Silver Spring, one commercial building on Bonifant Street would have to go. (The state’s report doesn’t say which building.) Peak-hour parking on some downtown streets would also feel the squeeze.
That’s not to mention the impact an on-street Purple Line will have on the new library’s design. Currently, plans for the new library place a Purple Line station on the building’s ground level, with books, bookworms and librarians stacked above the tracks.
If a tunnel is built, downtown’s buildings would be spared. However, the state would need to score small bits of property to install the tunnel’s ventilation shafts and safety hatches, the report stated.
Instead, tunnel construction would move the demolition crew to Seven Oaks/Evanswood (below), which would lose three or four houses to the tunnel’s gaping portal on Wayne near Mansfield Road. Other home owners near the tunnel opening would have a bitch of a time backing in and out of their driveways. And houses that sit above the south side of Wayne would need retaining walls to keep them in place, the report noted.
So now what? Stick a fork in this tunnel idea — it’s done, the state transit administration wrote.
“The MTA has concluded that this tunnel option would not reduce adverse community effects,” the report read. “Based on the significant impacts to the residents in the tunnel portal area, the additional costs, and the loss of a station serving the Silver Spring library, it was determined that this tunnel option did not provide sufficient benefits to justify its inclusion in the [route determination] or to continue its design.”
Image courtesy of the Maryland Transit Administration. Lead photo courtesy of Flickr user dandeluca.
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An above ground light rail line through downtown Silver Spring will be a clusterfuck of epic proportions. Auto traffic patterns will have to be altered. The rush hour traffic on Colesville and Georgia would become a parking lot. If you have rail trains rolling through downtown Silver Spring every 5-10 minutes during rush hour, this would cut-off traffic flows between city-to-Montgomery County. The largest commuting volume flows between DC and the outer suburbs in Montgomery County and Howard County.
I also expect to view frequent pedestrian and auto-related deaths along the Purple Line in Silver Spring as the lead story on the 11 o’clock local news.
Are you telling me that MTA can’t tap into that $800 billion Obama stimulus package for the cost of building a tunnel?
I would rather have no Purple Line if we can’t find an effective solution that addresses above-ground traffic flows of cars and people.
IHY, do you own a car and drive it regularly?
Not that much stimulus funding went directly to transit. Some fighting was able to increase it, but the transit to highway ratios aren’t substantially better than in normal transportation bills. There may be more money available in future budgets, but there is not a lot of money just lying around waiting for transit projects to claim it.
Regardless, the traffic patterns may have to be changed. Such is life. City-to-city travel in the down county will get easier on the whole though, as it’ll be possible to take rail directly without going downtown.
Err, make that Sanders.
IHY: Detailed traffic modeling was performed as part of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement. You are welcome to read the report and draw your own conclusions, but modeling all Silver Spring intersections in the path of the medium investment light rail alignment (the at-grade scenario dicussed in this post) showed that building this alignment would actually improve traffic flow at all but one.
The stimulus money available for transit is for projects that are ready to go. The Purple Line is not ready to go.
Forget about s stop or no stop at the Library! A major shopping and entertainment district of the metro area without its own Purple Line stop? Retailers will never allow that. Or become the laughing stock of the Universe, as happened to the Silver Spring Chamber of Commerce c. 1970 when it didn’t want Metro to go under Georgia Avenue.
We could get really reduced travel time by eliminating all PL stops between Bethesda and New Carrolton.
The point of light rail is to maximize access, as an alternative to getting in the car. Access is increased by having more stations, not fewer. Travel time can be increased by imaginative routing and scheduling. Not every train would need to stop at every station. At peak hours there could be ‘express’ trains that would skip over some neighborhood stations.
JKS is so right — SS would lose so much of the PL’s potential if it only stopped at the Transit Center/Red Line nexus. It does not matter to me if an additional SS station is at the library site or elsewhere but we must have another point of access the PL.
The library we have in Silver Spring is a terrible facility. We deserve far better. Building the Purple Line will cause some disruption no doubt, but take the long view. It’ll be really disruptive to all of us if we run out of fossil fuel and can’t get anywhere because we have no public transit. Let’s get this thing figured out so we can have the improved transit and the expanded and up to date library this community needs. The epic fail will be if we can’t come to agreement on getting these 2 projects going!
I agree with IHY. I simply don’t believe any model that says trains taking up travel lanes of streets and going through intersections will improve traffic congestion in downtown Silver Spring. The Purple Line may well cause more problems than it will solve for Silver Spring if it is on the surface. It should be done right = underground (and with a station at or near the new library), or it shouldn’t be done at all.
Urban environments all over the country, and 10 times more so all over the world, have successful at-grade transit systems. Go to any city in Europe. They’re installing new ones constantly there. Dublin got one just 5 or so years ago. Why do we give ourselves so little credit here? Why do we think we couldn’t possibly pull it off HERE? WE are gonna get hit by trains while crossing the street.. WE aren’t going to be able to plan decent traffic patterns around it… Most of the world’s major cities have tackled this problem and succeeded – why are we so convinced we’re so dumb here in MoCo? Do we have some brain defect caused by the water that’s going to make us step in front of moving trains or slam on our brakes when one is driving next to us in the road??
Editor’s note: This comment was edited for content. — JD (May 13, 2009)
Woodside Park Bob says “It should be done right = underground (and with a station at or near the new library), or it shouldn’t be done at all.” Underground stations are not in the cards no matter what: FTA simply does not fund them. Also, traffic congestion in any scenario is going to get a lot worse in Silver Spring in the coming decades.
Editor’s note: This comment has been edited for content. Please play nice. No personal swipes. — JD (May 13, 2009)
Paul,
The United States is not Europe. We do not have nearly the level of urbanized density as most European cities. In Europe, car drivers pay much higher gasoline prices because of taxes. Furthermore, Americans LOVE driving cars. The automobile is a symbol of the freedom of travel. No waiting for buses or trains; you get in your car and go. Because of the automobile’s popularity and the lobbying power of auto and petroleum industries, our urban planning policies will always give priority to road traffic. Sorry, that’s just how it is. But maybe our values of smart and healthy living will change in the future.
I wish we were more like the Germans though: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/science/earth/12suburb.html?_r=1&em.
IHateYuppies:
You said: “Sorry, that’s just how it is. But maybe our values of smart and healthy living will change in the future.”
Attitudes in the U.S. will start to be a lot more like those in Europe as our gasoline prices rise to over $5 per gallon too. You hit the nail on the head when you identified cost of gas as a major difference that has driven European attitudes to be different from ours. We are on our way to “catching up” with them with our gasoline prices, whether we want it or not. Can we doubt that the demand for better transit will be much higher here in the not-so-distant future?
I would prefer underground light rail with stations (hey, wont the new library’s foundation and basement serve as an already-in-motion underground station?) like the Red Rocket in downtown Toronto. However, no Purple Line at all is not an option.
Those 1,200 folks who can’t bring themselves to walk three blocks to the library aren’t likely to be using transit anyway. The proposed pedestrian bridge from existing parking to the library is for them.
The Purple Line is all about rezoning. Instead of rail, we need to improve bus and taxi service thoughout the metro area. We need to make our current crosswalks safer, add more, build more bus shelters, build guardrails or something to protect people who stand on sidewalk-free roads.
Developers want land, and state and county officials want to pump the tax base.