Purple Line (Maryland)

The Purple Line is a planned light rail line intended to link the Maryland suburbs of Bethesda, Silver Spring, College Park, and New Carrollton, all in the Washington metropolitan area. The line will allow riders to move between the Maryland branches of the Red, Green/Yellow, and Orange lines of the Washington Metro without needing to ride into central Washington, D.C., and will also offer transfers to all three lines of the MARC commuter rail system. Contrary to popular belief, and similarity of the name to some of the Metrorail lines, the project is being administered by the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA), an agency of the Maryland Department of Transportation, and not the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA/Metro).
Purple Line Transit Partners, a consortium headed by Fluor Enterprises, was formed to design and build the Purple Line, and subsequently operate and maintain it for 36 years. Construction began in August 2017. Work on the line ceased in September 2020, with the consortium intending to terminate its contract due to mounting delays and leaving the project incomplete without a general contractor.
Throughout the decades-long planning process, the project had been dogged by resistance, particularly from inhabitants of the upscale community of Chevy Chase. During the administration of Governor Bob Ehrlich plans were made to build a bus rapid transit line dubbed the Bi-County Transitway instead. Legal attempts to thwart the line continued even after construction had begun; but in December 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that Purple Line construction could continue despite these objections.
History.
Early studies, public debate, design.
The "Purple Line" has been the name of two different transit proposals. In 1994, John J. Corley Jr., an architect with Harry Weese Associates (which designed the Washington Metro system) proposed a multibillion-dollar Metro line around the Capital Beltway. This would have served as a "ring" line, connecting suburb to suburb, as compared to the lines of the existing Metro system, which radiate from Washington. ("See" Rapid transit#Network topologies.) In 1998, the Beltway Purple Line received considerable political support from Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan and then-Governor Parris Glendening, which was a $10 billion, line from National Harbor to Montgomery Mall.
In 1987, after CSX expressed a desire to abandon the Georgetown Branch rail line, Maryland leaders immediately started planning to repurpose it for transit and a hiking trail. The idea of adapting the railroad for a transit line dated back at least as far as 1970, when such a use was included in the October 1970 Master Plan for the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Planning Area. Montgomery County purchased its portion of the railroad right-of-way from CSX in 1988. Eventually, this proposal came known as the "Inner Purple Line" to distinguish it from the "Beltway Purple Line". By 2001, the "Beltway Purple Line" proposal had been abandoned as too costly and the name was attached to the Bethesda to line.
Robert Flanagan, the Maryland State Secretary of Transportation under Governor Robert Ehrlich, merged the Purple Line proposal with the Georgetown Branch Light Rail Transit (GBLRT). The GBLRT was proposed as a light rail transit line from westward, following the former Georgetown Branch of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (now a short CSX siding and the Capital Crescent Trail) to .
Both Governor Ehrlich and Secretary Flanagan introduced an alternative mode – bus rapid transit – that might have been utilized in lieu of light rail transit. To reflect this possibility, the administration changed the name of the project to the "Bi-County Transitway" in March 2003. Another reason that the "Purple Line" was discouraged by the Ehrlich administration was that its associations with the other color-oriented names of the Washington Metro system (which consists of heavy rail) might lead the public to expect a heavy rail option. The new name did not catch on, however, as several media outlets and most citizens continued to refer to the project as the Purple Line. As a result, Governor Martin O'Malley and Secretary of Transportation John Porcari opted to revert to "Purple Line" in 2007.
In January 2008, the O'Malley administration allocated $100 million within a six-year capital budget to complete design documents for state approval and funding of the Purple Line. In May 2008, it was projected that the Purple Line would have about 68,000 daily trips.
A draft environmental impact study was issued on October 20, 2008. On December 22, 2008, Montgomery County planners endorsed building a light rail line rather than a bus line. On January 15, 2009, the county planning board also endorsed the light rail option, and County Executive Isiah Leggett has also expressed support. On October 21, 2009, members of the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board voted unanimously to approve the Purple Line light rail project for inclusion into the region's Constrained Long-Range Transportation Plan.
Planners intend to utilize existing Washington Metro stations and to accept the WMATA's SmarTrip farecard. Metro's 2008 annual report envisioned that the Purple Line would be fully integrated with the existing Washington Metro transit system by 2030.
The proposed project prompted support and opposition in the community:
Support for Purple Line
Support for bus
Opposition to rail
Procurement.
The Purple Line was procured as a full design-build-finance-operate-maintain public–private partnership. On December 7, 2015, four teams composed of major American and international firms submitted their bids to realize the project:
Approval.
Governor Larry Hogan opposed the Purple Line project while campaigning in 2014 but approved it in June 2015. At the same time, Hogan cancelled its sister project, the Baltimore Red Line, citing excessive costs. Hogan reduced the state's contribution to the project from $700 million to $168 million, with the savings reallocated toward increased highway construction. The budget shortfall is expected to be covered by increased funds from Prince George's and Montgomery counties, as well as lower operational costs due to longer headways.
On March 2, 2016, Hogan announced that the state has chosen a team of private companies to build, operate and maintain a light-rail Purple Line in the Washington suburbs for $3.3 billion over 36 years. Under the winning bid – proposed by the team Purple Line Transit Partners and led by construction giant Fluor Corporation – the six-year construction project began later that year, and the 16-mile line may be open for service by late 2022 (according to MTA officials), or else 2023 or 2024 (according to Purple Line Transit Partners).
On April 6, 2016, the Maryland Board of Public Works – made up of Hogan, State Treasurer Nancy K. Kopp, and State Comptroller Peter Franchot – unanimously approved the contract, as expected. The $5.6 billion contract is 876 pages long and, according to "The Washington Post" is "believed to be the most expensive government contract ever in Maryland" and "one of the largest public-private partnerships on a U.S. transportation project" ever. The contract approval allows the Maryland Transit Administration to finalize $900 million in federal construction grants.
In August 2016, U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon found that the Maryland Transit Administration and the Federal Transit Administration did not study whether Metro's maintenance issues and ridership decline would affect the Purple Line. Judge Leon decided to vacate the Purple Line's federal approval. A federal funding agreement cannot be signed without the reinstatement of the environmental approval, and Maryland has said it cannot afford to build the Purple Line without sufficient federal funding. On August 21, 2017, despite the ongoing court case over the environmental analysis, $900 million of federal funding was granted for the light rail project. On December 19, 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in favor of the Purple Line, specifically stating that declining ridership on the Washington Metro system does not require Maryland to complete a new environmental study for the Purple Line. This federal appeals court ruling allowed for construction to continue and effectively ended the three-year legal battle surrounding the 16-mile light-rail line project. On April 13, 2020, U.S. District Judge James Bredar dismissed the third and final lawsuit brought by opponents of the Purple Line.
Purple Line Transit Partners quits.
By 2020, the project had accrued over $800 million in change orders from Purple Line Transit Partners and the opening date had slipped 32 months. The consortium sent a letter to the state on May 1 that year making known their intent to cease work on the line and terminate their contract. A temporary restraining order which had halted the company from quitting work was lifted in September, and PLTP began packing up construction sites the following week.
In November 2020, the Maryland Department of Transportation announced that MDOT and the Maryland Transit Administration have assumed many of the Purple Line’s contracts, including the manufacturing of light-rail cars, operations, and maintenance, as well as design and construction contracts. On November 24, 2020, the Maryland Department of Transportation agreed to pay $250 million to settle the costs of overruns that caused the contractor to quit and to resume construction of the Purple Line. In mid-December 2020, Maryland’s Board of Public Works officially and unanimously voted to approve the $250 million legal settlement to PLTP to resolve the contract disputes and resume construction within the next nine months.
Route and station locations.
The planned rail line will connect the existing Metro, MARC commuter rail, and Amtrak stations at:
The following stations are part of the "Locally Preferred Alternative" route approved by Governor Martin O'Malley on August 9, 2009:
Potential further expansion.
Although the majority of discussions about the Purple Line describe the project as a 16-mile east–west line between Bethesda and New Carrollton, there have been several proposals to expand the line further into Maryland or to mirror the Capital Beltway as a loop around the entire Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The Sierra Club has argued for a Purple Line that would "encircle Washington, D.C." and "connect existing suburban metro lines." Maryland Lieutenant Governor Anthony G. Brown, while campaigning in 2006, similarly stated that he would "like to see the Purple Line go from Bethesda to across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge," adding, "Let's swing that boy all the way around" (a reference to having the Purple Line circle through Virginia and back to the line's point of origin in Bethesda).
An advocacy group known as "The Inner Purple Line Campaign" has stated that the Purple Line could be extended westward to Tysons Corner and eastward to Largo, and that it could eventually cross the new Wilson Bridge from Suitland through Oxon Hill to Alexandria, eventually forming a rail line that encircles the city. The reconstruction of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge (I-495's southern crossing over the Potomac River) provides capacity for the bridge to carry a heavy or light rail line. Suggested stops along this proposed Purple Line expansion include:
Rolling stock.
The light rail vehicles designed to run on the Purple Line are being constructed by CAF at their Elmira, New York facility. Vehicles are long and can carry up to 431 passengers. Cars are planned to enter the testing phase of operation in 2020.