Planning Chair Agrees with the Gov

WTOP reports:

As studies ramp up on the proposed Purple Line, which would connect Bethesda to New Carrollton, transportation officials seem to be looking much more toward the below ground option.

Royce Hanson, chairman of the Montgomery County Planning Board, talked to the Maryland Transportation Authority about it.

"Right now they are doing an alignment study, looking at where the line should go exactly and determining how much of it should be a tunnel or on the surface. And, they are placing a lot more emphasis on tunneling than they had in the past," he says.

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley would seem to agree with that assessment. He recently gave a speech to transportation officials asking, "Could you imagine if people 30 or 40 years ago had said, 'We want to build a Metro system, but it all has to be above ground and it can only be fast bus.' What kind of region would we have?"

However, building tunnels is expensive. New state-of-the-art boring systems are very costly as Virginia has found out in the Tysons rail debate. In Maryland, where the state is facing a seriously depleted transportation trust fund, expenses will be even more closely monitored.

The Purple Line is proposed to run through Chevy Chase, Silver Spring and College Park.

"To the extent that tunneling is used, it will probably be less controversial," says Hanson. "But these matters have to be worked out in terms of what ridership is, what cost would be, and we are many months away from having those answers."

Looks like the State is getting more serious about considering tunneling.