Posts about MTA

The original plan: This design, the "locally preferred alternative," calls for lowering the floor of the tunnel to make room for an elevated CCT above the Purple Line. The Purple Line station would sit under the Apex Building, adjacent to the planned elevator connection to the Red Line.

Don't keep the trail in the tunnel: Another option would be to create a new trail alignment through Elm Street Park and along Bethesda Avenue. The tunnel would not have to be lowered, and the Purple Line would run alone in the tunnel. The station would be located in the same spot as in the original plan.

Don't put the Purple Line in the tunnel: The Purple Line could terminate east of the eastern end of the tunnel, letting the trail to remain in the tunnel. Passengers transferring to the Red Line would have to walk approximately ¼ mile to get to the new southern entrance to the Bethesda Metro.

Tear down and rebuild the Air Rights Building: Tearing down the Air Rights Building, above the tunnel, would make it possible to create a wider tunnel and fit the trail and train station side-by-side. It would require a slightly longer walk for transferring passengers than the original plan. It would also cost a lot of money to purchase and demolish the Air Rights Building on the east side of Wisconsin Avenue.

Have a narrower Purple Line through the tunnel: Several alternatives looked at using single track or gauntlet track in the tunnel. Station locations included placement in the original location or farther west in the Woodmont Plaza.

The County Council's Transportation and Environment Committee will discuss this issue on March 1.

The findings are disappointing to those of us hoped to escape making a very hard decision. All of the new alternatives for keeping the trail in the tunnel would either seriously degrade the level of service and operational capabilities of the Purple Line, or have an unreasonable cost.

The MTA draft report could do a bit more to persuade everyone by giving more details about why they rejected some alternatives. For example, the report says that operational models showed that the reduced transitway width alternatives didn't work, especially since the Bethesda station will be the end of the line.

But the report gives no information on the method and assumptions behind the simulations. It would be easier to accept the conclusions if they made those available for review. In any case, the MTA is likely right about this. I can find no examples of successful single-track operations for a terminal station with a short headway.

As much as I wish it were otherwise, we are back to the hard choice: either spend a now-estimated $50.9 million and take considerable construction risk to keep the trail in the tunnel in an overhead structure, or develop the alternative surface route across Wisconsin Avenue.

The right choice is to develop the surface route to the fullest extent possible. $50.9 million is simply too much money to spend to avoid one at-grade crossing for the trail. That cost will double the total cost of rebuilding the CCT, putting the whole trail project at much higher risk of being abandoned in these very difficult budget times.

Also, the elevated trail will involve a narrow switchback to climb above the tracks, and then run in a cage above the tracks. This will not be attractive to most trail riders, and certainly not inviting enough to justify spending $50.9 million.

There is also too much risk that digging under the APEX building will destabilize the entire building. The Silver Spring transit center turned into a fiasco because engineers underestimated the risk of a construction method. Nobody wants another mess like that along the future CCT in Bethesda.

Most likely, the council will decide against taking on the cost and risk that comes with keeping the CCT in the Bethesda tunnel. The political blowback from this decision will be intense; some of that has already started in the comments to the Washington Post's story about this report.

"Save the Trail" advocate Pam Browning and others are advocating for a third option: kill the Purple Line. But they have the tunnel vision that comes with thinking that CCT means "Chevy Chase's Trail." They care little about whether the CCT is ever completed into downtown Silver Spring, and would have us obsess about one trail crossing at Wisconsin Avenue while overlooking the many other at-grade crossings east of Bethesda that will be eliminated as a part of the Purple Line project.

A version of this article originally ran at Silver Spring Trails.

Between Silver Spring and Bethesda, the proposed Purple Line will run on an abandoned railroad line. This line has been a bicycle/pedestrian trail for some time, and an improved trail will be included as part of the Purple Line project.

Lyttonsville is an industrial and residential neighborhood near Silver Spring. The area is located north of East-West Highway, between the CSX tracks (MARC Brunswick Line) and Rock Creek. Here, the Purple Line diverges from the active CSX right-of-way to run on the abandoned Georgetown Branch.

The MTA briefed local residents on the new plans at a neighborhood work group meeting last week. Some significant changes have been made to plans in the area. The primary difference is that the future CCT and the Purple Line work yard are flipped in their positions. Now, the CCT is proposed to run along the north side of the Purple Line transit/trail corridor from Rock Creek to the CSX corridor.

One of the major benefits of the Purple Line to trail users will be the inclusion of grade separation at all intersections. Currently, cyclists have to cross traffic 3 intersections and one driveway between Bethesda and the eastern end of the trail in Lyttonsville. Plans had already included adding grade separations at Connecticut Avenue and Jones Mill Road.

With the proposed bridge over the tracks for Stewart Avenue and the closure of the driveway, cyclists and pedestrians will be able to cycle from the Silver Spring Transit Center to Woodmont Avenue in Bethesda without crossing a street.

Other changes are described below:

At Rock Creek, the CCT remains on the north side of the light rail tracks. The prior plans called for the CCT to switch from the north to the south side of the tracks at the Rock Creek trail bridge. The new plan holds the trail on the north side. The trail bridge is simpler since it does not have to twist under the Purple Line bridge.

The access ramp from the CCT down to the Rock Creek Trail would be like before, except that it would be built on the north side of the berm. This access ramp is still under discussion between MTA and M-NCPPC. There are concerns about cost and the impact on the trees on the side of the berm, and a decision could be taken to just continue to use the existing connection on Susanna Lane.

At Grubb Road, a new bridge will carry the access path across the Purple Line tracks to the CCT on the north side. The drawings show a long switchback ramp to provide the elevation needed for the new access bridge. But the access path is roughly along the same alignment as the old Brookville Road bridge that crossed over the B&O tracks here long ago.

The railbed elevation is already well below the elevation the access path has now, and I believe the extent of the switchback ramp shown in the drawing is grossly overstated. When I asked Purple Line project manager Mike Madden about this, he indicated the ramp in the drawing was only conceptual and was not based on any elevation measurements, so it is likely overstated in the drawing.

Along Brookville Road, MTA is proposing an access trail paralleling the main trail. The drawing shows two trails alongside each other along the south side of Brookville Road. The main CCT is the wider trail (to be 12 feet wide) that is next to the Purple Line tracks. It goes under the Lyttonsville Place bridge and under the relocated Stewart Avenue bridge.

The access trail is the narrower trail (to be 8′ wide) that is adjacent to Brookville Road and between Brookville Road and the main CCT. It serves as a Brookville Road sidewalk and also gives access to the main CCT between the Lyttonsville Place and Stewart Ave. bridges. The access trail crosses Lyttonsville Place and Stewart Avenue at-grade at the north end of the bridges.

At the Lyttonsville station, the CCT is on the north side. Under the old plan, the Purple Line tracks and station were on the south side of the rail yard, and the trail was on the south side adjacent to the industrial lots. Under the revised proposal, the trail and Purple Line have been moved to the north side, closer to Brookville road.

Additionally, MTA is considering moving the transit station location further east, closer to Stewart Ave. This would place the station closer to the entrance to the Walter Reed Annex, the area's largest employer.

A bridge at Stewart Avenue, will be constructed. Part of Stewart Avenue will be shifted to line up with the main entrance to the Walter Reed Annex and to have Stewart Avenue cross over the CCT and the Purple Line on a new bridge. The old plan had both the trail and transit crossing Stewart Avenue at-grade. This change would remove the only at-grade roadway crossing on the CCT and Purple Line between Bethesda and Silver Spring, making the rebuilt trail 100% grade separated.

A relocated trail bridge over the CSX tracks. The CCT would cross over the CSX tracks on a new bridge similar to the old plan, but the bridge would be shifted to the north closer to Kansas Avenue. This would not be a significant change for the trail, but does reduce the impact of the Purple Line on Talbot Avenue. Talbot Avenue could remain as a two way street as it is now, and much less r.o.w. would need to be taken from the several homes on Talbot Avenue.

Overall I consider flipping the CCT from the south to the north side to be roughly an even trade for trail users. Access will be slightly more inconvenient from neighborhoods to the south, but easier from the neighborhoods and businesses on the north. The trail will be closer to Brookville Road—with more traffic noise. But it will also have a new grade-separated crossing at Stewart Avenue.

Much like the lengthy discussion of north versus south in Bethesda/Chevy Chase, your preference will be determined largely by whether you live or work on the north vs. the south side of the corridor. As always, much will depend on the details to be developed during the next design phases.

The MTA comparison of the impacts shows that the overall footprint of the project is little changed through this area. A few feet of r.o.w. would be taken on the north side, but a comparible area is spared on the south side. The notable exceptions are the parking structure for the Purple Line maintenance yard employees that would be built where the car storage lots are now, and the realigned section of Stewart Avenue that would be built where the landscaping stone storage yard is now.

Some residents from neighborhoods on the south side of the project are making claims that the new plan will impact them much more than the older plan. But I don't buy it. The most active part of the project, the Purple Line main track and station, are moved farther from the south side neighborhoods. The storage tracks and maintenance building are only a few feet closer to the south side residences than in the older plan, and still have good separation from the residences.

The parking structure will be closer to the Claridge House high-rise, but will a parking structure used by the approx. 200 employees really be that much worse than the car storage lots and landscaping business lots that are there now? Detailed noise studies have been promised by MTA.

The more transparent a transit agency is, the more riders will trust it when it communicates online. Derailments happen. There will inevitably be more on the Metrorail system. How WMATA reacts to them and other incidents matters.

Creating a "climate of openness and transparency" means tweeting about the good and the bad, acknowledging when things go wrong, and being open about the recovery process. Many transit agencies already use Twitter very successfully; @PATHTweet and @NYCTSubwayScoop are two excellent examples.

WMATA would do well to model its social media initiatives after those of the Port Authority and MTA, and could start with simple steps. Many frustrated riders already report problems on Metrorail, Metrobus, and MetroAccess using the #WMATA hashtag.

Knowing that WMATA is listening, and even getting a response back from @MetroOpensDoors would help to improve communication and the public's perception of their customer service. In doing so, they'll join @DDOTDC, @DCCirculator, @bikeshare, @DCRA, @mydcwater and other DC-area agencies in providing useful customer service via Twitter.

DDOT's recent Potholepalooza was a great example of meaningful engagement, as DC residents reported potholes via Twitter (no complicated forms to fill out!) and potholes were filled within a day or two. For WMATA, the complaints might be of hot Metro cars, dirty buses, or bad driving, but the concept is the same.

The next step is to be there to provide information when riders need it most. For example, @MetroNorthTweet signs off every afternoon, just before the evening rush hour starts:

Tweeting for a transit agency isn't a 9-to-5 job. Whenever the system is open, riders should be able to seek help on Twitter and get a response. Twitter is all about immediacy, and if you're trying to find out why your bus is late, or report a problem on your train, getting a response the next morning may not help. WMATA may not be able to provide round-the-clock coverage on Twitter, but signing off before the evening rush hour isn't a recommended practice, either.

In short, Metro riders have been using Twitter for a while now; it's time for WMATA to come to the party with something more than just automated tweets.

Riders deserve a meaningful follow-up when they report service problems, and when things go wrong, nothing less than the unvarnished truth will do on Twitter. When weekend riders have to endure disruption and delays for upgrade work, show them the work that is being done, and explain how they benefit.

Today, WMATA has neither a reputation for transparency nor for effective communication with riders, but that's something they can change, starting with simple, effective steps.

In April, the State of Maryland responded. Rockville has its answer, and it's a resounding "no way."

According to Maryland Department of Transportation Secretary Beverley Swaim-Staley, any realignment outside of King Farm would increase costs, reduce ridership, lengthen trip times for riders, and would not meet Federal Transit Administration regulations. Swaim-Staley puts simply: "A King Farm Boulevard option is the most reasonable and effective for the project."

Good work, MTA, for following through with a good decision and not bowing to a truly ridiculous example of anti-transit paranoia.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

Three proposed realignments shown in green, red, and yellow.

The first two realignments, those shown in green and yellow, would more directly serve dense, walkable, mixed-use developments. The green one would move to run through the center and densest part of Crown Farm, a massive TOD-to-be. The yellow alignment would provide a station at Kentlands, the famous New Urbanist development.

The red alignment will more directly serve the so-called Science City. Although that won't be a particularly walkable destination, it is dense with jobs and will provide a significant boost in expected ridership.

All together, these three changes are expected to increase ridership from somewhere between 21,000-30,000 daily (depending on mode and other factors) to between 29,000-42,000 daily, at a cost of about $100 million on top of the estimates for the original alignment. That's such a phenomenally good deal that it would set the Corridor Cities Transitway as one of the most cost-effective projects in the pipeline in the entire country, therefore positioning it excellently to receive federal funds.

MTA should adopt all three realignments. Each one improves transit access to important destinations over the original route, and each improves Maryland's chances of receiving federal funds.

If you get hit by a Maryland State Highway Administration snow plow, tort liability is limited by the Maryland Tort Claims Act to $200,000 to a single claimant for injuries arising from a single incident or occurrence.

If you get hit by a speeding police car and its driver in Maryland, tort liability is similarly limited to $200,000 by the Local Government Tort Claims Act.

Yet if you get hit by an MTA bus or MARC train, the MTA's tort liability is unlimited.

CSX, which owns the tracks the Brunswick and Camden Lines operate on, requires MARC to carry $500 million per incident in liability insurance. MARC currently self-insures up to $5 million and would have required the winning bidder to carry $5 million in insurance as well.

Potential bidders had apparently found this requirement too difficult to meet. But the MTA is forming a rescoping group, Taylor added, with a mandate to identify possible changes in the request for proposals that might encourage more bidders.

Meanwhile, CSX will continue to operate the Brunswick and Camden Lines through June 2012. After that, the MTA may exercise options with CSX for 4 three-month extensions, through June 2013. The MTA is paying CSX approximately $1 million extra per year for not getting CSX out of MARC operations and maintenance on schedule.

The obvious question is why the MTA requires so much liability insurance in the first place, when so little tort liability exists in seemingly analogous situations.

In Collier v. Nesbitt (1989), a court held that the Maryland Tort Claims Act does not apply to the MTA, because Section 7-702 of the Maryland Transportation Article is "a general waiver of sovereign immunity for the MTA", and the Maryland Tort Claims Act applies only "where no specific sovereign immunity waiver otherwise exists."

To make the law more equitable, the Maryland Department of Transportation has at least twice introduced legislation in the General Assembly to cap the MTA's tort liability.

In 2005, SB 154 would have capped the MTA's liability for the tort of an entity under contract to the MTA at the limits of the Maryland Tort Claims Act. But the bill received an unfavorable report from the Judicial Proceedings committee.

In 2007, HB 1130 would have capped the MTA's liability at $1 million for a single claimant for a single incident. This bill was withdrawn.

So try and try again? Let's hope so. This time a bill might pass, and Brunswick and Camden Line MARC riders could feel more confident that their trains will still be running on July 1, 2013.

While the new southern entrance was conceived as a bank of elevators that would connect the Red Line and future Purple Line, it would also serve as a second entrance to the Red Line, regardless of whether or not a transit rider is transferring. Therefore, its construction is not dependent on Purple Line groundbreaking.

A new entrance would immediately benefit Red Line riders the day it opens. This has made the county interested in financing the new entrance on its own, independent of the Purple Line's engineering process.

Because escalators need to be periodically rebuilt, the single-escalator bottleneck situation in the Bethesda Metro station was largely unavoidable. Realistically, the other escalator that goes between the mezzanine and the platform will need to be rebuilt at some point in the future. And then Bethesda will be right back to being cramped and frustrating.

Like Medical Center, Bethesda only has one escalator bank that connects the mezzanine and the surface. I shudder to think what would happen if there were some sort of emergency down on the platform when one of the mezzanine escalators is under repair.

The slow and cramped conditions on the one escalator would turn into something much worse. Because every escalator eventually needs to be rebuilt, there will be many points in the future where the Bethesda Metro station would be crippled in an emergency situation than under normal conditions.

Because of the ongoing global credit crunch, interest rates remain historically low. Part of the cost of any project is the cost of obtaining financing. As anyone with a mortgage knows, a lower interest rate lowers the monthly payments to service the construction bond.

Montgomery County should issue the construction bonds as soon as possible. Not only will they improve safety and ridership in one of Montgomery's most celebrated pieces of infrastructure, they'll get a good price doing so.

The MTA plans to add a crossover at Randolph Road (near White Flint) in 2011. In 2012, they will add another interlocking at Clopper's, between Metropolitan Grove and Germantown, and complete an interlocking at the Pepco power plant in Dickerson. This will reduce the distance between interlockings to 5-7 miles.

Jim Knighton, Director of the MTA's Office of External Affairs, says that roughly one-third of the money will come from the federal government, through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The remaining $12 million or so will come from the Maryland Transportation Trust Fund.

According to the MTA's TIGER grant application from September 2009, the MTA sees the additional interlockings as an intermediate step towards the capacity the 2007 MARC Growth and Investment Plan envisions by 2035 through adding a third track.

Right now, Brunswick Line MARC trains typically run in one direction on one track, while freight trains run in both directions on the other track. For MARC riders, more interlockings will mean fewer delays due to engine breakdowns, signal failures, or track work, because of CSX dispatchers' improved ability to send operating trains around the problem.

More crossovers will also mean fewer delays for MARC trains due to "freight congestion". The new interlockings will increase the effective capacity of the tracks by allowing CSX dispatchers to move faster trains around slower trains, rather than simply segregating freight and passenger trains by track.

Of course, CSX will benefit too. With the increased track capacity, there will also be fewer delays for CSX trains due to freight congestion. And, because stop-and-go commuter trains can be slower than freight trains, there will be fewer delays due to what might be described as "passenger congestion".

So why is only the MTA paying for the improvements?

The answer is certainly not because the MTA has lots of extra money. The Maryland Transportation Trust Fund is down 13% since 2007.

CSX, on the other hand, reports a net profit of $414 million (up 43%), an operating profit of $825 million (up 39%), and revenue of $2.7 billion (up 16%), in the third quarter alone.

The answer is rather that, as the MTA's TIGER grant application explains, "The work identified in these projects is driven by the need for greater reliability and frequency in commuter trains. CSX, on its own, would not have initiated this work."

This also happens to be one of the major points in James McCommons's excellent and enlightening Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service, a book that explores the current sorry state of American passenger trains and suggests how trains might once again become a real transportation option.

According to McCommons, the major railroads, including CSX, are not opposed to passenger trains on their tracks, as long as the tracks have enough capacity to handle both their own freight trains and the passenger trains. But if capacity is insufficient, it's up to the public agencies that operate the passenger trains to invest the money to fix the problem.

Needless to say, these public agencies have generally not had the money to invest. The MTA's announcement therefore demonstrates Governor O'Malley's continuing support for MARC—especially when compared to his predecessor, former Governor Ehrlich.

Over the past month, Brunswick Line riders have had reason enough to despair. With this announcement, they now have reason to hope, as well.