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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
Maryland, Building the Purple Line
The Purple Line represents Maryland’s significant investment in public transit, aiming to connect diverse suburban communities to the greater DC metro area. The episode covers its route, potential ridership, cost issues, and broader implications for urban transit in the U.S.
• Overview of the Purple Line life and vision from Bethesda to New Carrollton
• Importance of transit-oriented development along the route
• Current ridership statistics and future projections
• Financial challenges and discussions around cost overruns
• Impact of the Purple Line on commuting trends post-COVID
• Potential for urban sprawl mitigation through effective public transport
• Exploration of public-private partnerships and their implications
• Fare integration challenges between different systems
Doors are closing. Public transit that's my way to roll On the metro. I'm taking control. Bus stops, train tracks it's my daily grind, daily grind. Public transit it's the rhythm of my life. This week we dive into the Purple Line, the state of Maryland's plan to build a 16-mile light rail connecting several DC suburbs along the way. Despite delays and cost overruns, the system is scheduled to open in 2027. All of this and more coming up on Transit Tangents.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody and welcome back to this episode of Transit Tangents. My name is Chris and I'm Lewis, and today we are looking at a system just outside of DC called the Purple Line.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we had the opportunity to actually travel to Washington DC about a week ago. It'll be a little bit more than that when this comes out, but we have more episodes coming on the topic, don't worry. But we also checked out some of the recent progress on the Purple Line. Unfortunately, we were not able to put this project in our projects to look forward to in 2025, but it is coming soon right now, slated to open in 2027.
Speaker 2:When we got out there, we were actually gonna do this episode on site at one of the stations that's currently being built. However, I think on that day it was- about 27 degrees and very windy and snow, blowing through Half a foot of snow, my hands were freezing off.
Speaker 1:When we get to the Silver Spring Station section there'll be some actual B-roll that we took on the ground and I sacrificed my hands for you all so you can see it. But in general, the Purple Line for those of you not familiar is a 16 mile light rail that is going to be kind of the first real ring route around kind of outer DC. It's actually in Maryland in its entirety. It is going to be kind of the first real ring route around uh kind of outer dc. It's actually in maryland in its entirety. It's going to have 21 stations running from bethesda, maryland, to new carolton, um, and along the way it's going to interface with three different of the uh wmata, as we were hearing wmata wmata uh metro lines, uh connecting into DC, as well as three of the MARC commuter lines, an Amtrak section, as well as dozens of local and regional buses along the way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this is really the first ring route that is connecting in DC. You don't see ring routes a lot in the US. We just frankly don't have the train networks built out to the extent that they're really needed or where they benefit Right. But we are starting to see some ring routes coming out. This is one of them. We've mentioned a couple times. There's one in Dallas as well, called the Silver Line, not really a full ring route, but it is one that connects the airport to Plano, texas, so just a non-centralized line.
Speaker 1:Totally, and they're very normal basically everywhere in the world that have a really reliable, frequent transit. So it's nice to start to see some of these happening here at home. But for the episode we're going to start by kind of jumping into the actual alignment of the route, starting in Bethesda.
Speaker 2:So Bethesda is one of the many, many sort of suburban towns that exist outside of the city of DC, if anybody who has not been there. You have centralized DC and then you have Virginia and Maryland and there are tons of smaller cities all around it that are connected by buses, by trains et cetera. Bethesda is one of the larger of these if you're heading out on the Red Line out of DC. Very built up area, sort of perfect for starting the line. Here there's a lot of bus connections the Red Line connection, I believe a Mark connection as well that passes through here, and now soon to be the Purple Line connection.
Speaker 1:Totally, and it is one of the busiest stations, one of the busier suburban stations on the Metro. It sees right now about 5,000 to 6,000 riders a day and trending up. Before COVID it was actually seeing 10,000 riders a day on the Metro, so definitely some good potential interface with the Purple Line.
Speaker 2:Yeah absolutely From Bethesda. The line is going to move east through more of a residential suburban area. Out of Bethesda it's going to go to Chevy Chase, littonsville. Littonsville are a little less dense, but there's a lot of opportunity for more transit-oriented development to pop up around these stations, providing more houses and more ridership.
Speaker 1:Totally, and as we have the quick cameo from Chris's cat Otto here moving along, the next major station on the line is going to be Silver Springs. So Bethesda and now Silver Springs are kind of the two big ones and we have a few smaller ones that we've seen in between so far. Presently at Silver Springs the Metro sees about six to 7,000 riders a day. So another really popular, kind of more suburban station along the line, Silver Springs. We actually got to go check out in person. It is a major bus terminal, Number one, Huge bus terminal, yeah, multi-level.
Speaker 2:There were tons of buses coming in and out Private companies, public buses, all kinds of buses Totally.
Speaker 1:In addition to that, the Mark trains run there seemingly only on the weekdays, but there is some Mark train ridership. Also, this station is so built up all around it. This is like textbook transit-oriented development. You had lots of mixed-use, lots of apartments, a lot of offices as well and there were quite a few people. Actually it was a gross cold day out and there were quite a few people out and about. We actually went and got breakfast in this area. Very busy and, yeah, I mean overall very well interconnected into the region.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it was interesting to see how the Purple Line is being added into this development that's already there. There's a big flyover bridge coming off of the right-of-way where you see the Red Line and the Mark Line coming through. This sort of flyover bridge has a station on the opposite side of the development and then it kind of ended and so we were looking at this saying there's buildings all around us. Where the hell is this train going to go? Turns out it makes a kind of sharp turn through a parking garage and then onto the main street in this area. It was a really cool design to see.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and they're definitely spending real money. On this section we're going to talk about the financial elements of this, which the costs have gone up, surprise, surprise, as the developments continued. But yeah, I mean this is like a real big infrastructure project going through Silver Springs to interconnect the Purple Line and integrate it really well with the existing service in the area. We saw some pedestrian bridges under construction.
Speaker 2:Bike share, bike share.
Speaker 1:Bike lockers. Bike lockers, which was nice to see, so if you wanted to bike in and have a secure place to leave your bike all day. Really, it seemed like they're doing a lot of things really well at Silver Spring. Yeah, I agree, from Silver Spring we had kind of one more dense station at the Silver Springs library, so not right at the transit center anymore but at the library, which again has a lot of the same benefits with the density and the transit oriented development at the station, before kind of moving off to a few more suburban stops next.
Speaker 2:Continuing east and out of Silver Spring. We're going to skip a few of the smaller stations. Again, these are more residential suburban areas. The Purple Line is going to continue over to the Tacoma Langley Station area. In Langley it's actually really interesting to look at the path of the train because they're using a really creative mix of sort of new right-of-way, existing rail right-of-way and in this case they're sort of transitioning back to the main roads and using the road right-of-way. So we see the purple line coming down the middle of sort of the main street in this area and passing by the bus terminal in Langley. So, again, another good use of transit-oriented development and connecting riders from the local bus system to this line.
Speaker 2:And then it continues on through the Tacoma area where there's a lot of the sort of strip mall developments that you expect to see in. You know, a modern America, american suburbia, tons of surface parking and, as you would say, where you see surface parking I see potential. Yeah, maybe coming to a t-shirt available to you soon, maybe, yeah, yeah, it's just like really classic. Maybe coming to a t-shirt available to you soon, maybe, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's just really classic. I mean right now, not the best land use to have surrounding these stations. However, if you redevelop it into some nice mixed use, keep the commercial that's there but build apartments as well, and, yeah, I think it could really help boost ridership. And when you already have that bus terminal there too, this area to me stood out as an area that has a lot of potential for future ridership Maybe not so much to start, but down the line, definitely. Yeah, absolutely. We'll jump right back into the episode in just a second, but first, if you haven't liked this video or left a comment, please do so. It helps us out quite a bit and we also have some exciting news.
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Speaker 1:Lastly, if you want to support the show directly and get access to early episodes, you can do so on Patreon. But without further ado let's jump right back into the episode Next, along the line we have four stops that serve the University of Maryland area, and it literally goes right down the middle of the campus, which is exactly where it should go. For folks not familiar, the University of Maryland has a student population of over 40,000 students Pretty sizable university Totally. And then when you add on to this, there's an additional 15,000 faculty and staff who work at the university, so potential ridership of almost 60,000 people just when you're counting students and staff, not counting any visitors and other business and whatnot that happens surrounding the area. To me this is a major win to have it in the system.
Speaker 1:Currently, the university is only kind of sort of served by the metro lines at college park green line that comes up through college park right, and it's presently like a bus ride or a long walk that most people probably weren't going to do, whereas now it will be an easy hop on to the purple line to connect you right to the green line. I'd imagine too that there's probably a lot of students who live in suburban Maryland who go too, that there's probably a lot of students who live in suburban Maryland who go here. So there's also just a lot of potential for commuters from Bethesda, from Silver Springs and several of the other places, even the more suburban stops all along the line to use this to commute into the university every day, which is just a major win. And the other thing I'll mention here is college students generally don't like to have a car in a lot of cases, I would say, if they don't have to.
Speaker 2:Don't like it or can't afford it.
Speaker 1:Or can't afford it exactly, and this is a great way to, regardless of their situation, introduce them to good transit before they become very car-pilled and decide they want to have cars everywhere always. I love that I used pilled right there, become very car-pilled and decide they want to have cars everywhere always.
Speaker 2:I love that. I used to pill right there. Even if you can't afford a car and you do typically drive your vehicle onto campus, this is also a good opportunity to leave the vehicle at home because, as any college student can tell you, parking fees on campuses really high, totally, really annoying. Yes, absolutely. Continuing east, past the college, we end up in more suburban residential areas. I think that's going to be a theme for a lot of this line.
Speaker 2:A lot of these areas fall into sort of weird areas with topography a lot of like watersheds and kind of woodsy areas. A lot of residential neighborhoods that you're sort of winding the road around Again, finding that creative path using the road right of way. Neighborhoods that you're sort of winding the road around again, finding that creative path using the road right-of-way anywhere that you can. But what we really notice on this last stretch between the University of Maryland and New Carrollton, which is the terminus of the line, is that there's not a ton of availability to develop a lot of transit-oriented developments. Right, there are a couple of strip mall, shopping center areas that we identified on the map that the rail line goes through, that have potential, but we're thinking this is probably going to be a lower ridership part of the line.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and I mean there was one thing that just stood out to me when we were scrolling through. I mean there is a grocery store near one of the stops which and I think there were some in some of the earlier suburban ones. So obviously having access to a grocery store on a transit line always going to be helpful for folks so like to see that sort of thing. But yeah, um, unlike some of the other stations, less room to uh for development here, or less room for development with, like out, a huge ordeal of like relocating single family homes and all that sort of thing which folks are not going to let happen. Basically, I would imagine.
Speaker 2:They did find some space to put the OMF here, though, which is the operations and maintenance facility, so the OMF is also tucked away in this line and, as you kind of called out, off camera. That's probably why the line started here was because they found some cheap, or at least good, land to build this facility.
Speaker 1:Totally. And this kind of brings us to our last stop on this line, which is New Carrollton. So you know, maybe there'll be some decent ridership because of this last stop here. So New Carrollton is currently the end of the Orange line for the DC Metro. There is some transit-oriented development being built here right now. There's some stuff that's open already. So obviously, the potential interface with the Orange Line only a good thing. The transit-oriented development happening here only a good thing. This is also where DC Metro has a big operations facility. They store a lot of their trains in New Carrollton and also New Carrollton has a stop on the Amtrak as well and presently sees about 4,000 riders per day on the metro line.
Speaker 2:So another good place for a lot of transit transfers and a lot of ridership generated. Maybe in New Carrollton We'll see if it extends down the Purple Line.
Speaker 1:I'm really curious to see what the ridership is ultimately going to look like and where the main destinations that people are traveling to, where they're mostly getting on Obviously, like you know, the main ones that we pointed out Bethesda, silver Springs, new Carrollton and the whole university area, usdot and some of the studies on this they're expecting somewhere in the realm of 56,000 weekday trips on it, like every weekday they're expecting roughly 56,000 riders. But it's also one of those things that I'm curious yeah, how long those rides are going to be, if there are going to be sections of this that don't see it when we look at some of the travel times on it.
Speaker 2:It's not all doom and gloom, but it's a little funny. Yeah, I do wonder, with some of the travel times, how people are going to perceive this. So, for instance, if you're going to take a bus on the length of this line, which nobody's really doing nobody's really taking a bus from New Carrollton to Bethesda, but if you were to do it today it would take about 92 minutes total time city to city. That number is only going to go up over time, especially as there's more people in the area, more development, more traffic. So by 2040, they're actually estimating that commute to be 108 minutes long, so definitely growing. If you were to take Metro Rail currently, which would be taking the red line all the way down to DC, transferring to the green or orange sorry, to the orange and then taking the orange back up, it'll take you about 55 minutes and the projected amount of time on the purple line right now is 63 minutes, Right?
Speaker 1:So meaning it's actually faster to take the DC Metro in and then back out than it would be to take the Purple Line end to end. But it's a lot better for the less distant spots, right? So if you're you know, a more realistic example of where someone might be traveling and using the Purple Line would be going from Bethesda to Silver Springs. So in 24 or 2030, the estimated time by bus would be 40 minutes. The Purple Line is projected to take 10.
Speaker 1:So on some of the destinations that probably are going to be more likely, you're likely going to see travel time saved, but on some of the more distant ones, it's not great, and a lot of that has to do with this being light rail and not being in dedicated right of way the whole time. There's a lot of weaving in and out of traffic. There are some sections that are elevated or have real dedicated space, but yeah, that's a long distance travel. So of course you'll see the Metro, which has got grade separation the entire way. Not interfacing with traffic at all is going to beat it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have to think about how traffic patterns work and we talk about this a lot that people have a bias against buses. So if you're going to try to get somebody to go from one of these suburban towns into DC not using their car, it may be an easier sell, even if it's a little bit longer to take the train, almost like a circulator, like a bus circulator would be. Take it to the nearest metro line. That's going to then get you into central DC. I think that's going to collect a lot of commuters. Would it be quicker by bus? Probably so, but can you get people over their bias of buses? I don't know.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and I mean overall, I think this is a good project that needs to be done. There are some complaints that folks have about it, though, so we'll kind of transition here into talking about the cost issues that we've seen so far.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been nicknamed the most expensive not nicknamed, I guess, but described as the most expensive light rail project by mile in the world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not great. Not great. It was initially expected to cost just over five billion dollars and now we are very close to doubling it at $10 billion. So not great. I'm going to read a direct quote here that just kind of gives a little bit of insight here, from a Maryland Matters article Nearly seven years after construction began, transit authorities returned to the Board of Public Works yet again this month, this time seeking an additional $425 million for the light rail project.
Speaker 1:It was the fourth such request since 2016 to supplement the Purple Line's original $5.6 billion budget. Following the three member boards' unanimous but reluctant approval, the total cost of the Purple Line is now approaching $10 billion. So, you know, four times in just the last few years they've gone back to ask for more money. So it's like it's tricky because obviously, like costs have gone up since COVID right, obviously everywhere. But it also seems like, if you're going back four separate times to ask for more money, there's also and I don't know for sure, right, but it also just seems like there's some some incompetence or something. Sure, right, but it also just seems like there's some some incompetence or something going on where it's like you had to continue to go back and ask for money, like adjust the budget. Adjust the budget, that's fine, but adjusting the budget four times in like a couple years feels inefficiencies in government spending on building transit systems.
Speaker 2:I just I've never heard of that.
Speaker 1:It doesn't have to be this way, it doesn't have to be that way and this.
Speaker 2:This would go into a whole other episode that we could do and which we should do just breaking down exact costs of transit systems. But yeah, this is a an old story in the us. Anytime you're going to try to build a new transit system, it's almost always over budget and takes a little more time than you would expect. It doesn't have to be that way. There's a lot of reasons, a lot of ways we could make this more efficient. There's a lot of reasons why it is the way it is now, but this is sort of the reality of this transit system Right, and it is being built under a private-public partnership model, also known as a P3.
Speaker 1:It's a whole other conversation we could have. Rm Transit did a really great video just explaining P3s and the pros and cons to them, which we'll leave a link to below if you're interested in diving into that.
Speaker 2:And they can be really good for the public. I mean, if you're trying to offset some of the costs, you give some of this project to a private company, they get to recoup those costs, whether it's by fares or other methods. That's all fine and good, but then your local government has limited control over the system. Totally so definitely. If you're summarizing pros and cons, that's kind of that's a lot of it right.
Speaker 1:one other thing I want to touch on on the purple line too is the purple line is a transit project in Maryland. It will have a different fare system than the rest of the kind of WMATA system, from what I understand at least, and while it's not the biggest deal in the world, there are a lot of transit systems, especially in the United States, that deal with this, like even New York City comes to mind. If you're coming from New Jersey, you know, on a PATH train or something like, you're buying a fare for the PATH train and then you're buying another fare for the MTA, for the subway and whatnot. So you know it works, but it's not as convenient as you'd like it to be necessarily.
Speaker 2:And in this day and age we can track riders so easily. We can transfer the money from fares pretty easily across state lines. It really doesn't make sense for it to be as difficult as it is. So it is a little disappointing that they're not already talking about integrating into this payment system. But, as you said, you look at New York and it's kind of a similar issue, kind of anywhere you go.
Speaker 1:And it's something that in the future could be fixed pretty easily too. So it's not all doom and gloom.
Speaker 2:If I can use a toll transponder to drive on a highway in Texas and have that same toll transponder work in Colorado Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we should be able to use a train between two states, right, we do it for car drivers, we should do it for transit, right, exactly.
Speaker 2:So that is the summary of the Purple Line as it exists today and what will open in twenty, twenty seven, hopefully, hopefully, at fifteen billion dollars.
Speaker 1:No, no, no no more. 10 billion we got.
Speaker 2:We got it at 10 but this is really just one segment of a much larger project that's going to connect not only maryland but also connect into virginia, back around to dc, and the idea is that you are making a true ring route.
Speaker 1:I know we've been calling it a ring route and this is only like one little section of it yeah, and there are a lot of uh, good potential places, similar to Bethesda and Silver Springs and New Carrollton, that already have development built up, that this could continue to help connect, continue to interface with existing transit lines along the way, and it would make a lot of sense. And it's something that again, as we kind of briefly touched on at the beginning of the episode, is super normal in the rest of the world. Yes, not so much in the US. And you know, like when a lot of our transit systems were being built in the US, there was a lot more direct like, yeah, you went to downtown, you go to downtown to go out to eat and to shop and to work specifically to work in a lot of cases and you have a transit system set up for a morning commute and an evening commute. But that's just not how things work anymore.
Speaker 1:And it was kind of, you know, especially after COVID, with so many people working from home. Sure, you have a lot more people returning to the office and whatnot now, but there's also a lot of office development in a lot of these further out suburbs. There's a lot of other destinations throughout and people are not only just traveling at eight in the morning and at 5 pm at night. They're traveling more spread out throughout the day and projects like the Purple Line, in my opinion, really start to address that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so too, and this is sort of a consequence of the sort of uninhibited urban sprawl that we've created in the US. Similar in other countries too. You have this urban sprawl. You have these other little town centers. It's a different mindset on why they connect them and how they connect them with their ring routes and their larger transit networks. But here in the US we have a problem with urban sprawl. We have a problem with suburbia, and a lot of suburban areas are starting to densify. They're getting these offices, they're being their own economic engines. Now we have to provide mobility for these towns and if we're going to have this sprawl, we're going to have to find a way to connect them and it can't be that all of the traffic has to go into a centralized downtown area, especially because most people don't want to do that. It's going to be better for the environment and better for these towns if we can find a more efficient way to move people from these sort of suburbs around the ring to each other. Totally, that doesn't involve driving.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, with that, that's a whole lot on the purple line. Um, hopefully we can get back to the area post 2027 to go, uh, take a ride on the purple line, maybe not the full distance and also maybe in the summer and maybe in the spring. Yeah, yeah yeah, the joke I kept making the entire time we were in dc was I was I was suggesting we should go to Phoenix and it would have been about 80 degrees and sunny in Phoenix and instead it was snowing and cold and windy. But it's okay.
Speaker 2:We had a lovely time. We did have a lovely time.
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Speaker 1:Yep, and more to come there. Hopefully We'll see. If you've got requests, let us know Without any further ado, though, thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your transit. Tangents Tuesday.