Visionary Metro Proposal – Seeing Purple, Silver, and Green
January 7th, 2007 | by David Daddio | Published in East Campus, General College Park, Purple Line, Transportation | 18 Comments
Our very own Eric Fidler has overlaid three proposed Metro lines onto the traditional WMATA metro map that we’ve all learned to know and love. The first is the Purple Line, which we’ve covered extensively in the past and which gained significant attention in the last election. We propose 3 Purple Line stops in College Park in addition to the existing Green Line stop – one integrated into the new East Campus Project, one in front of the Student Union (pictured), and a third near the Marriott at University College.
Eric also added the Silver Line – a project expected to begin construction in early 2007 that will close the 23-mile gap between Virginia’s Orange Line and Dulles Airport. This at a price tag of $4 billion. The state of Maryland and its politicians, apparently overcome by fear that Dulles will be more accessible than
BWI Airport, are seriously considering a 20-mile Metro Green Line extension to that airport from Greenbelt. Various politicians have promised preliminary studies.
The net result? College park as a major Maryland Transit Hub within a greatly expanded regional transit system. Click Here to see our proposal in detail. Feel free to pass it around.
January 8th, 2007 at 8:27 am (#)
To make this map complete (and show the potential of transit in the area) you should add:
1) the Corridor Cities Transitway (see this map:
http://www.actfortransit.org/images/CCT_20061202.jpg )
2) the rail line over the Wilson Bridge from Suitland through Oxon Hill and National Harbor
3) the streetcar line that Arlington plans to build from Crystal City and Pentagon City out Columbia Pike.
January 8th, 2007 at 10:32 am (#)
Is this just ideas or do plans really exist to take the green line all the way up to BWI Airport?
FABULOUS IDEA!!!!! PHENOMENAL!!!! That would be fantastic for the region
Who do we send letters to showing our support?
January 8th, 2007 at 10:51 am (#)
This is the coolest map I’ve ever seen in my life. It would be very cool if the green line were expanded like that. The recently elected District 21 representatives are in favor of it, but it is not in the pipeline just yet.
January 8th, 2007 at 1:05 pm (#)
The Maryland General Assembly authorized $1 million last year to study the feasibility of the Green line expansion to BWI.
Several years before several corridors were explored to get a high speed maglev train from Union Station to BWI, so the CSX corridor and the I95 corridor have already been looked at in some detail. The “winning” route was however the Amtrak corridor.
January 8th, 2007 at 1:37 pm (#)
It’s my understanding that the maglev project is completely dead at this point. Still the website is rather interesting:
http://www.bwmaglev.com/
January 8th, 2007 at 2:01 pm (#)
maglev = “mikulsli-lev”……that was Babs Mikulski’s (sp?) baby for the longest time. Would have been way cool. bummer to hear its d.o.a.
When will the U.S. “get it” the way they do in Europe when it comes to alternative modes of transportation……..and we sit on the beltway & 95 with our cars and tempers fuming…..
January 9th, 2007 at 12:53 pm (#)
Note that the Silver Line is supposed to go out to Stadium-Armory, not end at East Falls Church, as shown on this actual Metro mock-up. That way, if someone in College Park had to go to Dulles, they’d only have to switch once at L’Enfant.
Very nice map, though. I’ve been wanting to see what it all looks like for a really long time.
January 9th, 2007 at 3:50 pm (#)
Wow, very cool. So someone could metro directly from Dulles to the Capitol Building. Too bad the big wig types don’t metro. =D
That’s great that $1 million was approved to look into the green line. I didn’t know it was that far along. How much money has been devoted to researching the purple line?
January 9th, 2007 at 3:59 pm (#)
True, the Silver Line is supposed to continue to Stadium-Armory, but we’re curious as to how Metro plans to shove three lines through one set of tracks at Rosslyn during rush hour; even Dr. Gridlock is unsure.
WMATA’s de facto headway between trains is 120 seconds and their ideal “dwell time” (time a train spends in a station) is 30 seconds. Thus, we can extrapolate a figure of seven minutes between Silver Line trains, seven minutes between Orange Line trains, and seven minutes between Blue Line trains during rush-hour.
This pending crunch is not lost on WMATA. Rumor has it that the Silver Line will continue downtown with the Orange Line as planned, but that the Blue Line will split in two at the Pentagon with some of the Blue trains following the current route and the other half following the Yellow Line to downtown.
In 2001, WMATA engineers proposed a new tunnel to alleviate this congestion. The tunnel would carry the Blue Line from Rosslyn north by the Key Bridge to Georgetown, then east across the north side of downtown to reconnect with the current Blue Line route at Stadium-Armory. At a price tag of $6.3 billion, we shouldn’t expect a metro ride to Georgetown anytime soon.
January 9th, 2007 at 7:02 pm (#)
I love it. I think the important question is, how does the public get involved?
January 10th, 2007 at 2:22 pm (#)
Arlene -
Join Prince George’s Advocates for Community-based Transit:
http://www.princegeorgesact.org/
Or, if in MoCo, join Action Committee for Transit:
http://www.actfortransit.org
January 16th, 2007 at 4:42 pm (#)
Veteran DC blogger Richard Layman recently pondered some solutions to the Rosslyn tunnel bottleneck problem. Particularly interesting is the idea to run the Silver Line through DC all the way to Largo and just run the Blue Line from Virginia to downtown DC only. The Arlington Cemetery station, which would be “line-less” by this proposal would be the mid-point station for a Rosslyn-Pentagon “shuttle” line.
January 18th, 2007 at 1:20 pm (#)
Great map and summary. Just to add to the mix is the idea about having the green line extention also cover Columbia. It sounds like some folks what this additional stop to be added.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/05/AR2006040500927_pf.html
January 18th, 2007 at 1:21 pm (#)
Never mind. I see you had East Columbia on the map.
January 23rd, 2007 at 9:42 am (#)
That’s a huge gap of land between Konterra and East Columbia, I have yet to figure out, where exactly are they talking about when they say “East Columbia”? Laurel Mall is a major bus hub, placing another stop further up in laurel proper would make sense. Also what dosnt add up, is grab a map and trace the line from the konterra project to columbia back down to nsa out to odenton town center (near the odenton marc) and back out to dorsey then loop back to bwi. Really snakey… What makes Metro great is that it’s not just a series of parallel “line haul” transit lines, they cross so you can bounce around dc easily and that’s what we need in the suburbs, crossing metro lines so that it’s easy to go from nsa to rockville, or bwi to bowie. maybe a simultaneous orange line extension bowie crofton odenton ft meade dorsey columbia (atleast 2), and green line konterra, laurel, dorsey, arundel mills, bwi. too many people want coverage by one line, but other than commuter traffic it would be almost useless to have a line-pull setup, and those commuters are already using marc. dont get me wrong, i’d love to see this, but i’d like to see them do it right.
January 23rd, 2007 at 5:18 pm (#)
The linked article says that East Columbia would be near the intersection of 95&32. I think the map was the first crack at plans that are still on the wish list.
February 4th, 2007 at 4:40 pm (#)
These sorts of projects are never as easy as they appear, but continuing the Green Line along its current path adjacent to the Marc Camden Line tracks would seem relatively straightforward and useful. Put stations at (1) the existing train stop at Route 1 and Muirkirk, (2) a new mixed-use “downtown Laurel” (on the site of the large warehouses opposite Laurel Mall), (3) the train station where rail meets Route 32 and (4) where the rail crosses Route 100. Sprinkle a few more stations here and there to taste. Continue north until the rail meets Hanover Road, turn right and head into the airport.
Sticking close to the rail eases right-of-way while staying in the corridor bounded by I-95 and the B/W Parkway provides access by auto.
February 27th, 2007 at 4:51 pm (#)
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