County Council President Nancy Floreen on Tuesday asked the school system to halt work on a controversial interim bus depot in Rockville and scheduled a June 21 work session to discuss the county’s plan to find replacement sites to park more than 400 buses.
Floreen sent a letter to Board of Education President Michael Durso in which she asked Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) “to suspend all planning and other preparatory activity” related to an interim depot for 100 buses on a parking lot at the school system’s Carver Center headquarters.
The proposal has elicited strong opposition from some residents in nearby neighborhoods worried about the buses adding to traffic congestion, noise and pollution. City of Rockville leaders, state legislators, school board members and County Council members Sidney Katz, Marc Elrich and George Leventhal have also announced their opposition to the proposal.
The school system began looking at the parking lot, which is directly adjacent to Route 355, in case the county decides to vacate the Shady Grove Bus Depot on Crabbs Branch Way that is now home to more than 400 buses, training facilities and some maintenance functions.
The school system and the county’s Department of General Services are scrambling to find potential permanent and interim replacement bus depot sites so developers can start next year on a public-private project set for the Shady Grove land.
The formal declaration of no further need for the site must be approved by the County Council, an approval that has been delayed at least until December.
Many of the sites the county has suggested in the past have been rejected by nearby residents or for operational reasons.
The June 21 council hearing will focus on that process, Floreen wrote.
“We share your concern that the ultimate transition of this critical element of MCPS transportation operations must be carefully and thoroughly planned,” she wrote to the school board.
