The advocacy group hoping to save a three-mile Bethesda stretch of the Capital Crescent Trail from the Purple Line has enlisted a local timelapse video artist to help the cause.
The Friends of the Capital Crescent Trail recently hired Tolu Omokehinde, the Silver Spring photographer and visual artist who went viral this summer when his four-minute timelapse video of a day at Montgomery Blair High School hit sites including Mashable and The Huffington Post.
Omokehinde, who graduated from Blair in the spring, said the video was a tribute to the school. Almost immediately, he began getting offers from local groups like the Friends of the Capital Crescent Trail to produce videos for them.
The “Save the Trail” timelapse uses thousands of the same sort of images – cloud movement, the hustle and bustle of a busy intersection and pedestrian foot traffic – employed in the Blair High School video.
But it also seeks to emphasize the Trail’s natural beauty, something Friends of the Capital Crescent Trail President Ajay Bhatt said is often overlooked during a walking tour of the Trail with Bethesda Now last month.
“A place like this, basically miles of park land inside the Beltway, is so important with the development going on today,” Bhatt said. “People always argue how badly the Purple Line is needed. This place has its value, too.”
The $1.9 billion, 16-mile Purple Line light rail would run from New Carrollton to Bethesda and connect suburban inner-ring travelers to Silver Spring and the University of Maryland in College Park. It is currently unfunded.
Earlier this year, the Montgomery County Council endorsed moving the section of the trail that runs in a tunnel under Wisconsin Avenue to Bethesda streets and sidewalks to make way for the Purple Line.
Much of the double-tracked light rail would be built on the Bethesda and Chevy Chase sections of the trail, which the Friends group says would destroy a walking, running and biking path for thousands as well as a natural resource that doesn’t exist in many other places in the area.
