Two of the Chevy Chase residents whose lawsuit could delay or even jeopardize the Purple Line took to the radio Tuesday afternoon and faced sharp criticism from supporters of the controversial light-rail project.
John Fitzgerald, an environmental lawyer named individually as a plaintiff, and Ajay Bhatt, president of the Friends of the Capital Crescent Trail nonprofit that is a plaintiff, appeared on WAMU 88.5 FM’s The Kojo Nnamdi Show.
They said the decision from federal judge Richard Leon to order the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) and Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to consider how Metro’s declining ridership may impact Purple Line ridership projections was justified.
Fitzgerald also said the delay for an additional study that state officials have said could jeopardize the $5.6 billion project is the fault of state transportation officials who didn’t do enough to explain why Metro’s issues wouldn’t affect the light-rail’s projected 2040 daily ridership number of 74,000 people.
Just more than a quarter of Purple Line riders are expected to also ride Metro as part of their trips. State Transportation Secretary Pete Rahn has said state and federal transit officials intend to appeal Leon’s ruling.
“The chips will fall where they will,” Fitzgerald said when asked whether he thinks the ruling could kill the Purple Line. “[The MTA and FTA] went ahead with all their hubris and said, ‘We’ll just get it done.’ Now they face the consequences and it’s their own making.”
The two were asked by a caller what they—as residents of the largely affluent community of Chevy Chase—would say to poorer residents and business owners in places such as Langley Park who might be relying on the light-rail to provide better access to jobs or customers.
The caller, Dan Reed, a Silver Spring resident, blogger and Purple Line advocate, said Fitzgerald and Bhatt “live in a community that has benefitted from a massive amount of privilege and massive amounts of public investment.”
The light-rail would run 16 miles from Bethesda to New Carrollton and supporters have pointed to its potential for economic development as a major reason to move forward with the project.
“We are pro-transit people. We are pro-economic development people,” Bhatt responded. “But we don’t believe that a $5.6 billion capital infrastructure project is the right way. …Those people deserve more. They don’t deserve to have other services cannibalized by $5.6 billion of spending.”
The state has chosen Purple Line Transit Partners, a team of private contractors, to build and operate the system as well as to finance a large portion of its construction. The state would make payments of about $150 million a year to the group during operation of the light-rail, which before the judge’s ruling last week was scheduled to open in 2022.
The federal government is expected to supply $900 million of the project’s roughly $2.2 billion in construction costs, though a ceremony to finalize that agreement set for Monday was cancelled after Leon’s ruling.
Bhatt, whose home in Chevy Chase backs up to the Capital Crescent Trail where the Purple Line would be built, has long argued that building the light-rail would effectively destroy the existing trail setting.
Montgomery County has planned a transit system on the former railroad since buying the right-of-way in the 1980s. The trail would be replaced and extended into Silver Spring as part of the Purple Line project.
“We’re talking about a cost-benefit analysis,” Bhatt said. “What is worth sacrificing a three-mile linear park?”
Purple Line advocates have long criticized Chevy Chase residents who are against the project and characterized the area as a wealthy enclave with changing and conflicting reasons for opposing the transit system.
Members of the Action Committee for Transit (ACT) and elected officials from the Town of Chevy Chase, a small municipality that supported parts of Bhatt’s and Fitzgerald’s lawsuit, have frequently accused each other of wrongdoing. Columbia Country Club in Chevy Chase was also a target of criticism from light-rail backers, though the club came to a legal agreement with the state in 2013 that ended its opposition.
During the radio appearance Tuesday, Bhatt and Fitzgerald said opposition to the project is coming from more than just a few Chevy Chase residents, pointing to an online petition Bhatt claimed had more than 20,000 signatures from people around the region.
The project has the backing of virtually all local and state elected officials, including Silver Spring-area Del. Eric Luedtke. Luedtke tweeted during the radio segment that he was “amazed at untruths” he claimed were coming from Bhatt and Fitzgerald.
Earlier Monday, County Council member Hans Riemer told NewsChannel 8 that county officials aren’t discouraged by the federal court ruling.
“We’re hanging tough in Montgomery County,” Riemer said when asked if the Purple Line could meet a similar fate as the Arlington streetcar project that was cancelled in 2014 amid political pressure. “We’re not backing down on the Purple Line.”
Fitzgerald said he thinks the potential delay to do another environmental assessment of the Purple Line will help more people see the problems with the project that are alluded to in the lawsuit.
“The pause can help to inform us all much better than the information we’ve had so far,” Fitzgerald said.
