Like Al Gore, who lives in a humongous carbon-belching mansion while lecturing the rest of us on the dangers of global warming, sanctimonious moralists who don’t practice what they preach are some of the most annoying people on planet Earth. Unfortunately they’re everywhere, including the Montgomery County Council.
Like most local jurisdictions, Montgomery County has serious financial problems, with an estimated $400 million budget gap for the next fiscal year. In an Oct. 28 letter to Council President Phil Andrews, County Executive Ike Leggett identified $30 million in cuts from the current year that affect core services such as police protection and public schools, adding that future revenue shortfalls may lengthen the list. “There are few ‘easy’ reductions left to make,” Leggett warned.
But that didn’t stop a majority on the council from rejecting one of the easiest ways to save more than the entire looming budget deficit. Instead of backing a cheaper and more versatile bus rapid transit system for the Corridor Cities Transitway, as recommended by both county staff and common sense, council members decided to spend twice that on light rail instead.
Light rail is not cost-effective in good times, and it’s a terrible choice in bad times like these. According to the Maryland Transit Administration, light rail will cost $1 billion ($21.14 per passenger) while a BRT system covering the same 14 miles between Shady Grove and Clarksburg would cost about a third ($8.11 per passenger), not to mention the fact that BRT would be running long before a streetcar line could be built.
The kicker is that neither Leggett, who also backs light rail, nor the six council members who publicly support it — and are irresponsibly planning to throw away a half billion dollars on Nov. 17, when the final vote is taken — use mass transit themselves. The county executive rides around in a chauffeured spot utility vehicle, and council members all drive everywhere.
In an eye-opening article by The Examiner‘s Alan Suderman (“Montgomery council members eschew public transit for own cars,” Nov. 12) we learned that Valerie Ervin, D-Silver Spring, Nancy Floreen, D-at large, George Leventhal, D-at large, Nancy Navarro, D-Eastern, Michael Knapp, D-Upcounty, and Duchy Trachtenberg, D-at large, support transit in principle, but drive because it’s more convenient.
Trachtenberg conceded that taking transit to campaign events even part of the time “became a real hassle.” So she’s OK with spending a half billion dollars more than necessary so her constituents can have the same experience? Mind you, these are the same council members who recently endorsed a car-free plan for future growth centered around Metro stations that none of them use.
But they’re not the only ones who don’t follow their own advice. Montgomery County is full of global warming Chicken Littles who love mass transit for everybody else, but reserve the right to their own personal automotive space because they’re either too busy or too important to spend time waiting at stations and schlepping onto trains or buses themselves.
Just three council members backed BRT: Andrews, D-Rockville, Marc Elrich, D-at large, and Roger Berliner, D-Potomac. They were the only ones to make the connection between continued funding of schools, libraries, and public safety and assuaging the vanity of hypocritical transit enthusiasts who wouldn’t be caught dead actually getting on a bus (‘We are not hearing from people who say, ‘I love to ride the bus,'” Leventhal told the Washington Business Journal).
When the big cuts come next year, at least taxpayers will know whom to blame.
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner’s local opinion editor. She can be reached by e-mail at: [email protected].
