Report: Purple Line trail option could sink funding

Town of Chevy Chase releases its engineering study

The town, which opposes the light rail option, hired Schwartz in early winter of last year to study how it would be affected by a proposed Purple Line alignment.

The study analyzed the environmental impacts of a proposed light rail transit route that would run alongside the Capital Crescent Trail and through downcounty neighborhoods into downtown Bethesda.

An alternative route being considered by the Maryland Transit Administration’s Purple Line team is a bus rapid transit line that would run along Jones Bridge Road. That option is less expensive and more environmentally friendly, according to Schwartz’s report.

The bus line would cost $620 million to $1.24 billion in capital expenses versus a $1.16 billion to $1.75 billion capital cost for light rail, Schwartz said.

Shwartz, who has also studied bus rapid transit in places such as Los Angeles and used that experience as a partial basis, said MTA overestimated the travel time on a Jones Bridge Road bus.

The cost and efficiency level of buses versus light rail could mean the tipping point for federal matching funds to construct the Purple Line, the presentation stated.

‘‘Using the [Federal Transit Administration] formula, [Jones Bridge Road bus transit] appears to have the highest score and the lowest local funding match,” according to the presentation.

The Jones Bridge Road option as it is currently proposed would offer transit to areas of more population and job growth than would be serviced by a light rail along the trail, Schwartz said, showing graphs comparing jobs and residential growth on each route.

The upcoming Base Realignment and Closure expansion of the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda was a major factor in calculations, he said.

‘‘You should be aiming at BRAC,” he told town residents.

The light rail transit trains would cause three times more harmful emissions, such as carbon dioxide and particulate matter, than would a bus-driven system, Schwartz said.

And light rail along the trail would require cutting down ‘‘about 400 trees” at least — ‘‘arborcide,” Schwartz said.

Schwartz said his firm was not advocating one option over another. He said that a Jones Bridge Road bus option deserved to be fully studied, and that it would behoove light rail advocates to study the lower-cost bus alternative because of federal funding tendencies.

Audience members who came from the Town of Chevy Chase and elsewhere in Montgomery County, urged Schwartz to present the firm’s findings to the county Planning Board.

Caleb Kriesberg, a Purple Line citizen advisor from Silver Spring, asked Schwartz if he was ‘‘sort of telling the community what it wants to hear?”

Schwartz explained that, although his firm was under contract with the Town of Chevy Chase, he has previously given communities results that did not favor what the community advocated.

When audience members asked for details about Maryland Transit Administration research on the Purple Line, Schwartz said his conversations with the agency were ‘‘dismissive.”

‘‘In a closed door, they said, ‘Every other community wants [light rail]. Why doesn’t your community want it?’” Schwartz said.

The next step for Purple Line and the Town of Chevy Chase will come in a few months. The MTA’s draft environmental impact statement for the Purple Line is expected in August — at which point communities including Chevy Chase will comment.

The Town has already sent documents on Schwartz’s study to elected officials, including state Transportation Secretary John D. Porcari, said Pat Burda, the town’s long range planning committee chair.