If you have been following discussions at both the federal and state level, I think you would agree that funding of this level is unlikely. There are plenty who think that even pulling together a package for the Purple Line as a good quality LRT line is unlikely.

It is not just here that LRT is becoming the norm – look at France – new T-3 line opened last year – LRT not metrorail. Other lines throughout the country – LRT. In the U.S. the situation is no different.

This is not to say metrorail technology is not good and that the higher capacity and travel speeds would not be desirable. But it would take a tremendous change in land use to create the demand on the Purple Line corridor to justify such an investment and the Purple Line is not about creating manhattan densities in Bethesda, Silver Spring or College Park. It is about supporting the smart growth centers that exist and allowing the visions of their respective master plans to be fulfulled.

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I am all for Metrorail. You have got my vote. Make the Purple Line underground Metro and I am on board. It is the light rail that I am against because it will not help meet current and future transportation needs for the entire DC Metro region.

Was Ross Capon one of the co-founders of ACT or not? I thought he and Harry Sanders were the founders of ACT. I don’t have a problem with either of those guys. It is this new generation of ACT-ivists.

I personally have a real problem with some of the members of ACT. I have seen their members try to intimidate women who were having a petition drive. One of their members was in a rage because he could not pass through a crowd at a anti-Purple Line rally. He literally came within about an inch of striking my four year old daughter in the face with the bottom of a flag pole that was sporting a Purple Line Banner. He has NO idea how lucky he is that he didn’t hit her. To put it simply some these folks (BR) that represent ACT are not wrapped to tight.

If ACT worked in a spirit of compromise without all of the confrontation we would probably have less heat in this debate.

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The Action Commmittee for Transit (www.actfortransit.org) is a transit advocacy group with more than 1,000 individual members in Montgomery County. It is simply not true to call this organization “developer-sponsored”.

It is amazing how opponents of the Purple Line can act like promoting transit is taking us as a region and country in the wrong direction. If light rail is so dysfunctional why are virtually all cities with system working on expanding them. Check what is going on in red state Utah or Texas where Salt Lake City and Dallas continue to expand their networks. do a search of light rail in Denver or Minneapolis – you will get the same result. In fact, Minneapolis-St Paul are planning a line connecting through the Univ. of Minnesota campus with campus support.

Our country is a major contributor to the problem of global warming is part because of the auto-dependent transportation system. We need to change this system, and change begins with expanding transit options. Was metrorail a boondoggle? Believe me, there were plenty who fought it, sin verguenza. They shamelessly and myopically believed the best system is one based primarily on single occupancy vehicles. Of course, if metrorail weren’t carrying a nearly half a million passengers back and forth to work each day we’d all be stuck in traffic.

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As my teenager would say. What? Huh?

Either you are a flat-out disinformer, or you and your co-horts in this Light Rail circle jerk actually have each other believing this fantasy. Hale Bopp here we come.

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