Stop being so “Kardashian” about mass transit Last year, the Montgomery County Council froze development along its high-tech Interstate 270 corridor until funding was found for a Corridor Cities Transitway between Clarksburg and the Shady Grove Metro station. However, the freeze — designed to keep traffic at its current near-intolerable lever — also prevents economic growth, which translates into lost jobs and tax revenue.
Since two other light rail projects in Maryland are sucking up all available state and federal funding, Montgomery officials and developers are only now reluctantly considering using local and private funds to build a cheaper bus rapid transit line instead of the light rail they prefer. Their supposed loss is taxpayers’ gain.
The cost of the 15-mile CCT “train on rubber wheels” — including dedicated lanes — is about $491 million. Compare that to the $1.93 billion it will cost for the 16-mile Purple Line connecting Bethesda to New Carrollton, or the $2.2 billion for Baltimore’s 14-mile Red Line. These two light rail projects are sucking up state and federal transit funding. Had state and county officials chosen BRT instead, they would have had enough money to build the Purple and Red Lines and the CCT — with $3.2 billion to spare.
Detroit also planned to spend $528 million on a 9.3-mile light rail line serving its hollowed-out urban core, but city officials wisely pulled back because of very real concerns that Detroit could not afford the light rail line’s annual operating costs. They are now shifting $500 million to a 110-mile BRT system that will connect three counties and the airport, and help 60 percent of still-employed city residents get to their suburban jobs. Motor City will soon have largest BRT system in the nation, joining other cities with successful BRT lines such as Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Vancouver, British Columbia
Since BRT is so much cheaper and way more flexible, and provides mass transit to a much larger area for the same capital costs, why would any public official even consider fixed rail? Detroit blogger Jeff Wattrick, who admitted his “disappointment” over the loss of light rail even while noting BRT’s many advantages, finally concluded that it was mostly because of aesthetics, not practical dollars-and-cents or even transportation concerns. “Why are we so Kardashian-like about mass transit?” he wondered. It’s an excellent question that every Maryland taxpayer should be asking their elected officials.
