An old transportation idea is back, and it remains as divisive as ever.

On Wednesday, the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board is scheduled to decide whether to include a proposed new Potomac River bridge among nine other major transportation projects on a list for further consideration.

Studied and debated for decades, the idea to build a new span west of the congested American Legion Bridge, is again splitting officials on either side of the river who have different visions of improving regional mobility.

In Virginia, some public officials and business interests are calling for another study of a bridge that could connect Rt. 28 in Virginia to Maryland. In Maryland, key decision makers remain steadfastly against even studying, let alone building, a multi-billion dollar bridge.

The mere presence of a bridge study on the planning board’s agenda spurred the Montgomery County Council to unanimously approve a resolution on Tuesday condemning the idea.

The county opposes building a new span west of American Legion Bridge for several reasons, according to Council President Roger Berliner: First, the bridge would land in an agriculture reserve; second, it would contradict the county’s smart growth principles, and third, it would drain state transportation dollars from more pressing priorities, namely WMATA.

“We do have real problems with congestion. We need real solutions, not fantasy bridges that will never happen,” said Berliner, who said the idea has been studied many times over the years, most recently in 2014. Virginia shut down that study because Maryland officials remained opposed to the bridge concept amid disagreements over its actual congestion-relief benefits.

“It should not be studied for another nanosecond,” Berliner said.

Bob Buchanan, a real estate developer and president of The 2030 Group whose members include regional business leaders, said it would be wrong to dismiss the potential benefits of a new bridge for regional mobility and the economy.

“It’s really a shame that one jurisdiction wants to hold the rest of the region hostage to its political views,” said Buchanan, who said business leaders in Montgomery County may differ from the stance of their elected leaders.

“Let’s study and understand what our options are. I think it would be unwise not to do that. Our congestion is getting worse,” said Buchanan, who said Metro’s troubles have received attention disproportionate to its importance to ordinary commuters.

Metro “constitutes less than 20 percent of all our daily trips. No one is talking about some of the big regional priorities when it comes to roads.”

In a news release, the Coalition for Smarter Growth, which derisively calls the bridge idea an “outer beltway,” criticized Buchanan and other real estate developers for lobbying for new road construction to open up rural land to development.

“The upper Potomac Bridge and other segments of an outer beltway are back, as a result of the latest multimillion dollar lobbying campaign that began back in 2010,” said the coalition’s executive director Stewart Schwartz in the statement.

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The idea was ambitious when Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett pitched it in 2008: transform 90 acres of county-owned industrial land at the Red Line’s Shady Grove terminus into a transit-friendly urban village.

Leggett’s Smart Growth Initiative would be a break-even proposition for taxpayers over time, he said, and might even make money as the county got an attractive new residential neighborhood and replaced outdated warehouses and garages with state-of-the-art facilities elsewhere.

But nearly a decade in, as Leggett (D) nears the end of his 12-year tenure, this signature project has not gone forward as expected. Only a fraction of the money anticipated from land sales to private developers has been paid so far. And the county’s difficulty in finding a new site for a school system bus depot has slowed progress on a major portion of the planned Shady Grove community, including a new park and elementary school.

Critics on the Montgomery County Council say Leggett overpromised and underdelivered, adding to the county’s $3.2 billion debt by borrowing against land sales proceeds that have yet to materialize.

“This is just not a good news story,” said Council President Roger Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda), one of three council incumbents running for county executive in the 2018 Democratic primary.

But Leggett says he devised a creative way to replace outdated buildings and pursue transit-
oriented development policies far more quickly, and effectively, than had been done in the past. Even his own staff was skeptical, he recalled in an interview.

“I was the sole person who believed we could move all these pieces,” he said. “You can argue that a few dollars didn’t come in at the precise time. . . . The county comes out far ahead in the long term.”

In Leggett’s calculus, proceeds from land sales to private developers, along with fresh tax revenue from the new construction, would eventually pay for relocating and rebuilding outdated facilities in Shady Grove and elsewhere. There would also be savings from exiting costly leases the county was paying to rent some of the old structures.

After nearly a decade, parts of that vision have been realized. Along Crabbs Branch Way, within walking distance of the Shady Grove Metro station, the first of a planned 400 new townhouses and 1,100 apartments — some subsidized, some market-rate — are sprouting up where a school system food distribution center, a liquor warehouse and maintenance garages for Ride On buses once stood.

Those facilities and others, including the police and fire training academy, have been successfully moved and rebuilt on other county land.

But those relocations got more expensive as the county expanded the scope of the projects and made state-of-the-art improvements.

Changes in menus and increased emphasis on fresh food, for example, added $9 million to the $35 million school center. Advances in training methods raised the police and fire academy price tag by $15 million, to $63.1 million. All told, the cost of the replacement buildings increased by $60.8 million.

At the same time, Leggett narrowed the county’s expected revenue stream by changing Montgomery’s original agreement with EYA, developer of the townhouses and apartments on the west side of Crabbs Branch. The county initially expected to collect $103.8 million from EYA in fiscal 2015, according to a 2012 fiscal summary drawn up by Leggett’s office. But Leggett decided to allow EYA to pay incrementally as portions of the 45-acre site were built, in order “to help them with their cash flow.”

To date, the county has collected slightly more than $2 million from EYA, which has completed about a quarter of the Westside at Shady Grove project. On the other side of the ledger, the county has benefited from $19 million worth of roads and other infrastructure built by the company. It also credited the company with $4.5 million in exchange for building additional affordable and workforce housing.

 

Leggett has also strategically held certain parcels of county land back from the open market, believing that waiting will result in a better deal.

Five years ago, Montgomery struck an agreement with the developer Hines to convert the old public safety training academy on Great Seneca Highway in Gaithersburg into a life-sciences complex with companies and housing. Leggett placed the $70 million project on hold in hopes of luring a major cybersecurity center to the 50-acre site. That possibility is now less likely. The project has been placed back out for rebidding.

Most vexing for Leggett has been the difficulty in finding a new location for 400 county school buses kept in a 35-acre depot opposite the new townhouses on Crabbs Branch Way. The county agreed in 2012 to sell the land for $70 million to developers LCOR and NVR.

An initial plan to put some of the buses at the Carver Educational Services Center on Hungerford Drive drew sharp neighborhood opposition. Compounding the issue is overcrowding at all five MCPS bus depots. With no obvious available option, Leggett this spring ordered a study before he decides what to do about the Shady Grove depot. It is likely to delay development by 12 to 18 months more, at least, he said.

Council member George Leventhal (D-At Large) said it was “not good planning” to jump into the development venture without knowing where the depot would be moved.

“I don’t think it’s something we can foist on a community just to transform a Metro station,” said Leventhal, also a candidate to succeed Leggett as county executive.

The Shady Grove initiative has generated an unexpected level of debt. Most big capital improvements, such as roads and schools, are financed through the sale of general obligation bonds, where principal and interest are usually paid off over 20 years. But the Leggett administration, interested in moving quickly and anticipating that land sales proceeds would soon be in hand, kept the smart-growth projects out of the capital budget, opting instead to use $200 million in short-term loans on which it paid only interest. Such interim financing is meant to be retired quickly, to avoid added expense for taxpayers. But the county is still carrying a balance of about $160 million.

“These are hard decisions,” said council member Marc Elrich (D-At Large), another county executive candidate. “It was somewhat of a gamble, and it hasn’t turned out entirely the way everybody thought it would turn out.”

Looking for funds to pay off some of the debt, Montgomery officials announced last month that they may use the $22 million netted from settlement of the county’s lawsuit against the designer and builders of the Silver Spring Transit Center.

The county could also sell more bonds to convert the debt from short-term to long-term. But that would crowd out other construction projects in the capital budget, which caps new bond debt at $340 million annually.

Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, and the region’s leading advocate for building most densely around mass transit, said despite the financial issues, the long-term benefits to the county remain significant.

“Given the growth that’s coming to the region,” he said, “the county needs to take as many opportunities like this as possible, so we don’t choke on our traffic.”

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More than a dozen nonprofit organizations are backing the call for dedicated funding for Metro — and soon — saying that without it, the system risks further deterioration and drastic service cuts.

The 18 groups say they are aligning with the region’s business community to secure reliable, bondable annual funding stream for Metro, which stands alone among large subway systems in its lack of a significant source of dedicated funding. Business leaders from 21 regional chambers of commerce and employers’ groups issued a plea last week for dedicated funding and a restructuring of the system’s governing board.

Now, the nonprofits are adding their voice to the mix — highlighting the system’s importance to the region and the potential for further service reductions as key considerations in the fight. The groups, including the Coalition for Smarter Growth, the Sierra Club and the League of Women Voters, released a Statement of Principles in March endorsing dedicated funding and calling Metro “crucial for the economic health and sustainability” of the region.

“Going ahead, it’s gonna take both the business community, with their clout, and the nonprofit community, with our membership, to keep this focus on saving Metro and to win the funding the system needs,” said Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, which is leading the nonprofit groups’ charge.

The nonprofits break from the business groups and some political officials, however, by eschewing immediate calls for an overhaul to the system’s governing board, though they support structural reforms. Schwartz said the Coalition for Smarter Growth is awaiting the release of a fall study by former transportation secretary Ray LaHood, which is expected to include recommendations on the system’s governance.

Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld has asked for $15.5 billion over 10 years for capital needs — including $500 million in new dedicated funding annually — and concessions from the transit agency’s unions. Wiedefeld also broadly supports the demand that board members have a singular fiduciary duty to the transit system, which business groups and some officials have called for.

Republicans in Virginia have said any increases in funding should be tied to labor and governance reforms.

“The one thing we don’t want to see is we don’t want to see political gridlock over structural and governance issues that end up delaying or endangering the additional funding the system needs,” Schwartz said.

The nonprofits say state and local jurisdictions should prevent Metro from falling into a “death spiral” by providing the funding it needs and ensuring frequent and reliable service. Budget woes, stemming partly from lower-than-expected ridership, forced Metro to raise rail and bus fares and reduce service frequency on five of six lines beginning this week.

Nancy Soreng, co-chair of a Metro working group of the League of Women Voters of the National Capital Area, said it’s up to regional leaders to determine how to reform the system’s governance and labor but that funding can’t wait.

“The most urgent thing for us is to get the three jurisdictions to agree on a dedicated funding source,” she said. As for structural reforms: “That’s a battle that we’re going to stay out of, and we’re going to let the politicians sort that out.”

Soreng was quick to note that the League of Women Voters has endorsed a sales tax for Metro since at least 1980, as the group’s website reflects.

“A sales tax which excludes such necessities as food and medicines would be the best means of financing mass transportation in the metropolitan area,” it points out. A regionwide sales tax, endorsed by a technical panel of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, is among the funding mechanisms regional leaders are weighing. Soreng said her group is open to other means of raising the money if the region can agree on them.

The Coalition for Smarter Growth stopped short of advocating a specific funding mechanism.

“We believe that the jurisdictions should commit to a level of funding and then find the mechanisms that work best for each of them,” Schwartz said.

The nonprofits are calling for dedicated funding to be established by the conclusion of the fiscal year next June.

“Waiting any longer means that capital costs could rise, you could fall further behind in the capital restoration in the system,” Schwartz said. “The operating gap could increase further, and there could be more service cuts.”

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Purple Line supporters Monday described a federal judge’s latest ruling in the long-running Purple Line lawsuit as “ludicrous” and “terribly flawed,” while the plaintiffs called it a “victory for everybody.”

Both sides were quick to react after Judge Richard Leon issued a ruling Monday morning that called for the Federal Transit Administration to conduct a new environmental review that thoroughly considers the possible impact of Metro’s ongoing ridership decline and safety issues on the planned 16.2-mile light-rail project.

The long-awaited ruling came in a lawsuit filed in 2014 by two Town of Chevy Chase residents—John Fitzgerald and Christine Real de Azua—and the trail advocacy group Friends of the Capital Crescent Trail.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan called the ruling “incredibly disappointing, but not entirely surprising,” and said the state “will continue to pursue any and all legal action to ensure that the Purple Line will move forward.”

Leon took about five months to issue the ruling after receiving information from FTA and Maryland Transit Administrations that stated Metro’s woes wouldn’t significantly impact ridership on the Purple Line. It could take several months or more than a year to conduct the new environmental analysis ordered by the judge, which requires public hearings, if the state accepts the ruling and doesn’t appeal it.

“The fact that it took a federal judge this long to reach the conclusion that more study is needed is completely baffling and, if allowed to stand, will cause irreparable harm to this vital project and cost the state hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars,” Hogan said in a statement issued Monday afternoon. He said the ruling ignores the opinions of federal and state transportation experts as well as environmental advocates who support the project.

“This is not a political issue—it’s an important transportation and transit priority for Maryland and the region that has strong bipartisan support,” Hogan said.

Opponents of the project were pleased with the ruling.

“Obviously, it’s a victory of substantive analysis over agency arrogance,” Ajay Bhatt, president of Friends of the Capital Crescent Trail, said Monday. “Before Montgomery County, Prince George’s County and the state continue to push this fiscally irresponsible and environmentally damaging project, we should focus on Metro’s woes.”

He said the state and the two counties that are contributing funding to the project should shift that money to help the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority fix Metro and to other projects that could reduce traffic congestion in the area.

“This really is a victory for everybody,” Bhatt said.

Fitzgerald, who also serves as an attorney on the case, said in a statement the judge’s order requiring the FTA to conduct a new Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement “should provide the public with a chance to put up-to-date facts on the record.”

Leon’s decision is likely to further delay the start of construction, which was scheduled to begin late last year. A spokeswoman for the Maryland Attorney General’s Office said officials are reviewing Leon’s order before determining whether they’ll take additional legal steps. Earlier this month, Attorney General Brian Frosh requested a legal maneuver in D.C.’s federal Court of Appeals to try to force Leon to issue a ruling by June 1.

State officials have warned in court filings that further delay could result in losses of $13 million per month and possibly lead to the cancellation of the project. Leon previously vacated the project’s federal approval in an August ruling, preventing the state from securing $900 million in federal funding needed to pay for construction, which is expected to cost more than $2 billion.

The entire project is estimated to cost $5.6 billion over the 36-year contract with the state’s private partner—Purple Line Transit Partners—which is a group of finance and construction companies working with the state to design, build, operate and maintain the light-rail line.

The state has also estimated that it stands to lose about $800 million that’s already been spent on planning and designing the project as well as for contractual penalties that must be paid to the private partner if the project is cancelled.

In his ruling, Leon said the federal and Maryland transit administrations failed to adequately analyze the potential impact of Metro’s ridership decline on the future ridership of the Purple Line.

However, the transit agencies found that even if no Metro riders used the Purple Line, the light-rail line would still have about 50,000 weekday riders by 2040, compared to the 69,300 including Metro riders that is currently projected. Ridership at that level would still be enough to meet the line’s purpose—to create a reliable east-west transit system between Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, according to the agencies.

Metro’s ridership problems are among about two dozen environmental issues that the plaintiffs claimed the agencies failed to account for in their 2014 environmental review of the project.

Leon said he’ll “issue an opinion on these remaining issues in the next few weeks”—raising the possibility that additional roadblocks besides Metro’s issues could be raised. It’s not immediately clear if the state can appeal Monday’s ruling given that Leon hasn’t ruled on the other pending issues in the case.

Meanwhile, Purple Line supporters believe Leon’s decision provides the state with an opportunity to appeal his order.

Montgomery County Council President Roger Berliner called the ruling “a terribly flawed decision, one that I am confident will be reversed by the Court of Appeals—and the sooner the better.”

Berliner added that Leon’s opinion is “profoundly lacking in logic” because it says Metro’s current travails will have a profound impact on ridership on the Purple Line in the year 2040, when FTA provided evidence that shows if there was not a single rider from Metro, and in effect no Metro system at all, that the Purple Line would still be in the public interest.

The Purple Line would be operated by the state’s private partnerer, not WMATA, but the line is designed to connect with Metrorail at five stations where riders are expected to transfer between the two transit systems.

County Council member Hans Riemer, an ardent Purple Line supporter, said he was not surprised by Leon’s decision.

“I think it’s good that we got this decision now, rather than six months from now,” Riemer said. “I think the judge probably would have sat on it as long as he possibly could.”

The judge wrote in his order that the decision took a considerable amount of time because he had a large caseload. He noted that since late January he has issued more than 22 written opinions and presided over 60 hearings in other cases.

“[Leon] is so wrong that in my opinion it proves that he’s biased,” Riemer said. “The state has already responded that a reduction in Metro ridership is irrelevant to the core decision of whether this is a cost-effective project. Even if Metro doesn’t exist, there’s still enough Purple Line riders to make it a good federal, state and local investment.”

However, Bhatt said state officials should be held accountable for signing the contract with the private partner while the federal lawsuit was still pending.

“Who’s going to be held accountable for the state’s decision to sign the $5.6 billion contract while the federal lawsuit hadn’t yet had its day in court?” Bhatt asked.

Pro-transit groups on Monday universally panned the judge’s decision.

“The slapdash and tardy ruling outright ignores much of the expert testimony that has already answered questions raised again by the court,” Ralph Bennett, president of Purple Line NOW, said in a statement. “Still, we are relieved to finally have a ruling, as Judge Leon has given ample grounds for appeal and we trust that the fundamental strength of the project will be vindicated in higher court.”

The Coalition for Smarter Growth, which supports transit-oriented development projects in the D.C. region, maintained the Purple Line will spur economic development along its east-west route between Bethesda and New Carrollton in Prince George’s counties.

“The Purple Line is a badly-needed east-west transit connection for access to jobs and revitalization, and significant ridership will be driven by that demand, as well as the revitalization inside the Beltway that the project will spur,” Executive Director Stewart Schwartz said in a statement.

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