Montgomery County Officials Seek Funding for Silver Spring to D.C. Bike Trail - washingtonpost.com

Montgomery County Officials Seek Funding for Silver Spring to D.C. Bike Trail - washingtonpost.com
County officials say they will push for capital funding in next year's budget to continue a long-delayed bike trail that would run from downtown Silver Spring to downtown Washington, a move residents say is overdue.



After preliminary designs for the Metropolitan Branch Trail, also known as the Georgetown Branch Trail, were completed three years ago, transportation officials said the project came to a halt to await a decision on the different proposed alignments for the Purple Line, a planned rapid-transit route between New Carrollton and Bethesda.

"If we didn't have an exact [Purple Line] alignment, we couldn't create the concepts," said Gail Tait-Nouri, the bicycle coordinator with the Montgomery County Department of Transportation.

The Metropolitan Branch Trail would connect with the Capital Crescent Trail, a route that extends from Bethesda to Georgetown in the District and runs through the Silver Spring Metro station, Takoma Park and back to the District near Union Station.

Uncertainty about the Purple Line also put property acquisition along the trail on hold, Tait-Nouri said. Montgomery County owns rights of way from Bethesda to Stewart Avenue in Lyttonsville. From there, CSX owns the right of way to the 16th Street bridge, with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and private parties also owning land along the proposed trail.

Now, with Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) set to decide soon on a Purple Line alignment and Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) taking suggestions through December for the county's Capital Improvements Program for fiscal 2011-12, officials are looking to move forward.

"Now's the time to finish this while all these things are being done," said County Council member Valerie Ervin (D-Silver Spring), who sent a letter to the transportation department in April urging progress on the trail.

Ervin took office in 2006, and she soon heard from residents demanding the long-awaited project be completed.

"This is the lynchpin bicycle project, and it's not just for biking and walking," Darian Unger, chairman of the Silver Spring Citizens Advisory Board, said in a telephone interview Thursday after lobbying the County Council to fund the trail. "We want to make Silver Spring a more livable community, and this is key to that. . . . A project this important shouldn't take this long."

The trail would provide a cohesive bike route that would allow residents to access the Silver Spring Metro station -- and the $91 million Paul S. Sarbanes Transit Center under construction in Silver Spring -- without using a car.

Silver Spring resident Casey Anderson bikes down Georgia Avenue daily to his job in downtown Washington. A board member of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, Anderson said the District has begun construction on its portion of the trail. And with Leggett and the Montgomery County Council agreeing on an alignment for the Purple Line this year, Anderson said, it's "intensely frustrating" that design work won't resume until fiscal 2011.

"It's not like this is an obscure project," said Anderson, who has suggested that the transportation department begin work on portions of the trail not affected by CSX or the Purple Line.

County transportation spokeswoman Esther Bowring said that it wouldn't be efficient to take a "piecemeal approach" to the project because of its size and cost.