Maryland planners are taking another look at designs for the proposed Purple Line rail yard in Lyttonsville after residents voiced concerns that the light rail facility would uproot businesses and disrupt their small neighborhood just west of downtown Silver Spring. The facility will be one of two rail yards and maintenance facilities for the Purple Line, the 16-mile light rail planned to connect New Carrollton to Bethesda. The other will be in Glenridge, near New Carrollton, said Purple Line Project Manager Mike Madden.
The Lyttonsville Purple Line site will include a two-level parking garage, maintenance and storage facility, rail yard and train station, Madden said. Not including the train station, it will be approximately 7 to 7.5 acres.
At a meeting with Madden last week, members of the Lyttonsville Civic Association complained that the latest Purple Line schematics had become too big, taking up most of the eastern and northern borders of their neighborhood. The facility also had moved from its original location, they said, putting the train in their backyards.
Maryland Transit Authority officials were proposing “turning a quiet community into a heavy industrial area,” said Susan Buchanan, a member of the Lyttonsville Civic Association.
Though residents in the area have long accepted the fact that their neighborhood will house a noisy rail yard, they wanted to understand why the plans had become so large, Buchanan said.
The latest plans would build over all the businesses between Lyttonsville Place and Stewart Avenue, Buchanan said. “We just don’t think a rail yard is a good substitution for local business.”
The neighbors want to shift the plans to the west, toward a more industrial area of Lyttonsville, and flip the train tracks with the rebuilt Capital Crescent Trail so that the trail keeps the train out of their yards.
Ajay Bhatt, president of the Friends of the Capital Crescent Trail — which has been fighting the Purple Line because it would require destroying and rebuilding a large section of the trail — suggested Madden move the plans out of people’s backyards and onto a busier roadway.
“Nobody wants a rail yard in their residential community, especially a rail yard that’s going to be doing 24-hour maintenance on trains.”
The plans have neither grown nor moved as residents claim, Madden said. The site was slotted for the Purple Line’s use in the county’s 1990 master plan — back when the Purple Line was the Georgetown Branch trolley line.
Still, he told the Lyttonsville Civic Association Thursday that he would take a second look to see if he can implement some of their requests.
The Purple Line is estimated to cost about $1.9 billion, Madden said.
