The Action Committee for Transit has gotten a look at Montgomery County’s secret plans for the Medical Center Metro area. Maryland’s Congresspeople got a $20 million DoD grant to make it easier for workers and nearby residents to walk to and from the station, facilitating greater transit use as BRAC grows both facilities. At the last minute, however, the Montgomery County Executive switched the plan without notice from a pedestrian access project into one a grade-separated interchange to speed even more traffic in and out of BRAC.

Montgomery County DOT officials are still doing everything they can to conceal their plans, knowing how unpopular it would be. They redacted the plan from the TIGER grant, calling it “proprietary business information,” and have refused to answer questions from us, advocacy groups, or even irate Montgomery County Council staff. They also didn’t show anything to nearby residents, who have been participating in a task force County Executive Ike Leggett set up to involve the community in BRAC plans.

Last night, officials agreed to show the plan to neighbors, but continued to try to keep it secret. They only invited a small group of people, and didn’t hand out any information. Fortunately, an ACT member found out about the meeting and took some mobile phone pictures of the slides.

“It is becoming increasingly obvious that MCDOT wants to use money set aside for transit access improvements to fund more road-building, and they know their plan cannot withstand public scrutiny,” said ACT President Ben Ross. “They have been hiding this design as long as possible in the hopes that by the time anyone figures out what they are up to and how much it will cost, it will be too late to do anything about it.”

If the USDOT funds this proposal, the tunnel would initially only serve pedestrians and bicyclists. However, it would be over 50 feet wide, enough to eventually route traffic through the underpass. The road also forces pedestrians to take a circuitous route, walking over 100 feet north from the Metro station (on the west side of 355) before taking the underpass at an angle back toward the southeast. This is far from the most direct route, and a longer walk than the current path directly across the road.

MCDOT designed it this way in order to allow for a full interchange. Sources have told me that DoD wasn’t interested in this plan, which Montgomery County didn’t clear with them either. They don’t want cars to and from NIH driving on their secure campus. But county officials pushed the plan anyway, designing an underpass wide enough to turn into their car-centric dream scenario at some point in the future.

If the road vision becomes fully built, as the above map shows, it would completely sever the surface pedestrian crossing on Rockville Pike, forcing pedestrians to walk under the road. That would surely reduce, at least somewhat, the number of people taking Metro to NNMC/Water Reed. Meanwhile, it would make driving even more appealing, increasing VMT to and from the site and traffic in the surrounding area.

For less money than this underpass costs, Montgomery could have built a direct elevator entrance to the Metro station from the NNMC side, saving workers several minutes a day and substantially increasing the appeal of using transit to get to work. For about the same cost as this underpass, they could have done the elevator entrance and a narrow pedestrian tunnel under the road. Instead, in secret, they decided to design something most efficient for vehicles and much less efficient for pedestrians than even the cheaper, unappealing pedestrian underpass-only option.

The most tragic part is that, if USDOT includes this in a grant, Montgomery County will have no choice but to build the vehicular-ready underpass (or forfeit tens of millions in federal money), even if the Council prefers the direct station entrance.

Update: Here is ACT’s press release with more information.