The Corridor Cities Transitway
Better rail transit is badly needed north of Shady Grove. The Action Committee for Transit believes that the Corridor Cities Transitway must be constructed as light rail. By itself, however, this one rail line is not a solution to the upcounty's transportation needs. It does not provide the access to the Metrorail system that upcounty residents want and need. Only by building a comprehensive rail system for the upcounty can the full value of the Corridor Cities Transitway be realized.
The principal limitation is that the transitway will not take people from Germantown and Clarksburg to the Red Line. Residents of these areas will still have to take the bus to Shady Grove after the light rail is built. The rail line will be too slow because the route detours far to the west and the trains will stop at many red lights.
Another problem is that as currently planned, the transitway will terminate at a parking lot on I-270 next to the Comsat building. It should extend into Clarksburg town center, where it would be reachable on foot.
At a public hearing on the Corridor Cities Transitway on Dec. 15, 2010, ACT made the following points:
- The I-270 corridor has overinvested in roads and underinvested in transit, leaving Kentlands and King Farm islands of walkability surrounded by inhospitable sprawl. Priorities have to be reversed to create a more livable upcounty and to give residents an alternative to the automobile. This should begin by setting aside plans to widen I-270 and studying all-transit alternatives.
- The Corridor Cities Transitway should be built as light rail because a busway will not make the planned future development transit-oriented. Moreover, a bus transitway would largely duplicate the faster bus service running parallel to it on I-270. It would add little value for travel from Germantown and Clarksburg to Shady Grove. And light rail has many other advantages over buses.
- The planned route has value as part of a larger network, in which the transitway provides local service that feeds into faster long-distance service. Connections are needed to the Red Line at Germantown in addition to Shady Grove and to all-day MARC service at Metropolitan Grove. To make this a reality, the MARC expansion plan needs to be a high priority.
- The proposed change in route through Kentlands is strongly supported because that community was originally designed to reflect the turn toward new urbanism. Light rail will be conveniently reachable on foot and will attract riders all day.
A further concern is that the design of new development planned along the transitway may be hostile to pedestrians and discourage transit use. As discussed in ACT's 2009 testimony, rhetoric about transit-oriented development is not matched by the specifics of the master plan for the corridor. More recent developments - such as Johns Hopkins' plan to build a 150-foot-wide roadway through its Belward Farm development - continue to be troubling.
Latest Updates
The Maryland Transit Administration has reaffirmed the routing of the transitway through King Farm. Some King Farm residents had objected to running light rail through their neighborhood, even though King Farm was planned around the transitway. They won support from the Rockville City Council, which asked the state to study other alignments.
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