I have no clue who he is or where he got is information, but he seems to have more details than the MTA purple line planners.

Do we know how many other bridges would have to be rebuilt up and down the length of the CSX corridor to accommodate double-height cars? If true, this would be about much more than the Talbot Ave. bridge, and could not be kept secret for long.

If they are considering double-height cars here, they better not be keeping it a security secret from the Purple Line & CCT planners.

Wayne P

My concern with light rail & noise is that it varies widely. I’ve lived near the very noisy MUNI system in San Francisco. It’s older technology with less noise damping built in, but all trains get noisier with age.

I’m also fairly neutral on north vs south alignments. At this point, I suspect they are trying to figure out how to put more of the yard west of Lyttonsville place & the alignment will rest on whether they take more land from WSSC or RideOn. Personally, I’d like them to take more from RideOne because that would leave the WSSC land for better development in the future, but I suspect RideOn is going to be more stubborn.

One question I’ve been trying to get answered regards CSX and the Talbot bridge. A commenter on another blog mentioned they want double-height containers on this line. That would require removing the bridge or making it radically higher. That would be a disaster for trail access. The Purple Line team hadn’t heard about this. I don’t want to place to much weight on a pseudonymous commenter. I posted a question on the CSX website a few days ago, but haven’t heard back. Have you heard anything about this or know anyone to ask?

You make some good points – I’ll try to answer a few.

I usually go through the area between 8:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. But I’m about equally likely to be walking my dog as cycling. I seldom notice the noise when I’m cycling, I guess I’m just more focused on the ride. But I see and hear much more when I walk the area. I agree the larger difference may be in the evening and weekend hours, when the businesses are closed but the future light-rail would be continuing operations. But light-rail is much quieter than the Metro rail we are used to. I think noise studies can show that the distance between the nearest homes and the light rail tracks is more than enough so that the increase in noise from light rail will be slight.

I must be reading the LPA roll map more cautiously than you, but I am not confident at all that there will be any significant trees between the trail and the service road east of Lyttonsville Place. In any case, we are agreed that it is important and possible to add more green space.

I asked Mike Madden about the switchback at the Grubb Road access at the first meeting, and he admitted MTA had not taken any measurements there. LIght-rail does not need as much overhead clearance height as freight rail, light rail can typically get by with as little as 16′ clearance while I believe the old standard for freight rail (and for the old Brookville Pike bridge) is 24′, and is now going up in newer standards. We won’t know for sure until the design progresses, but I still think a switchback will not be needed on either side.

I agree the Lyttonsville Place and Stewart Ave. Bridges appeared too narrow in the sketches. But these are conceptual scketches only and I would not put too much meaning into that. We need to press for wide bridges here, however.

It is true that more local bike and ped traffic will come to the Talbot Ave. bridge for access when the CCT is complete, but I think that increase in trail traffic on the bridge will be more than offset by the decrease in trail traffic because all non-local through traffic will be rerouted onto the future CCT trail bridge over the CSX tracks. In any case, I think we are agreed that we need to make this access route more safe and pleasant, especially for pedestrians.

I am not pushing hard either for or against the new proposal to “flip” the trail to the north side. I think we can work with either the north side or south side alignment, but both need work. I just hope we don’t get so caught up in some of the overly dramatic claims that we give too much aid to those who are trying to kill the Purple Line completely. If that happens, then we may never see the off-road CCT get east beyond Stewart Avenue, and that would be a much greater loss than losing the thin line of trees along the Interim CCT today.

Wayne P

I was the person commenting about trail shade at the meeting. I was a bit disturbed that this seemed to be an unconsidered issue to them. There is a difference between the LPA roll map & the design option. In the LPA roll map, there would be no shade past the WSSC facility west of Lyttonsville Pl, but there would be trees either shading the trail or on the other side of a service road for the full stretch east of Lyttonsville Pl. The deign option would have no shade & nothing more than a few cosmetic trees for the full 1/2 mile section. I agree they can partially fix this by moving everything slightly south, but suspect they’re also considering using some of the WSSC parking lot that was claimed in the LPA roll map for another yard track. I agree that it is possible and important to add more green space.

I frequently used the Grubb Rd access to the trail. A lot will depend on the actual heights of the trails & trail at this location. That the planners were noncommittal on how it would look probably means they don’t know yet. One think I know know is the height of the old trains versus the height of the new trains with catenary wires above. Using the hill off Grubb should help, but I’m not sure how, once they get over the wires, they’ll be able to smoothly ramp down to the trail heigh. If anything, I suspect the switchback will be needed north of the tracks.

Both the Lyttonsville Pl and Steward Ave trail/station access bridges seem too narrow for cars, bikes, & cycles. These will probably need to be widened without other majors design changes.

At the September 13th meeting, they said they will need to completely rebuild the Talbot Ave bridge to make it longer. They expressed willingness to consider making it wide enough for 1-way car traffic & a solid bike/pedestrian lane. I plan to keep pushing for this. I think you are significantly underestimating how bike/pedestrian traffic will change here with the CCT. The current option is not easy for less serious commuters & kids. A direct, fairly level path from this neighborhood to downtown silver spring will attract a lot more people. For many people, it will be a shorter distance & and a nicer walk than the East West Hwy sidewalk. They need to plan for this increase regarding Talbot Ave.

As I hope you see, I am giving the proposal fair considering & I get that more than 2 businesses east of the station will probably be needed, but there are realistic concerns that will require more than cosmetic changes that need to be addressed.

The actual timeline is also shows serious communication problems between the principles. Before the rail plan was approved by the county & state, there were many yard sketches of widely varying sizes depending on whether it was a bus or rail yard. None of these should be considered to have set precedents. The one document that is relevant is the “Alternatives Analysis: Draft Environmental Impact Statement” that was published in September 2008. That is what was presented to our elected leaders to let them decide the impacts of the bus vs rail proposals. Table 4.1-1 of that document, readable at: http://www.purplelinemd.com/images/stories/purpleline_documents/deis/deis/09_chapter4.pdf lists the business property displacements for each bus & rail option. In that plan, ALL possible rail options were listed as displacing 1-2 private businesses. This is in accord to what some in my community assumed was still true and radically differs from the 11 displace businesses in the map you copied here from October 2008.

Considering some of the same people wrote the AA/DEIS that was published in September 2008 & put together the October 2008 area map, it brings up the serious question of whether there was gross internal communication errors or if the AA/DEIS knowingly underreported the impact to Lyttonsville. If this holds up Purple Line construction, MTA has no one but themselves to blame and I really want the Purple line and trail built.

As for how the yard would affect the area, while I agree that some of my neighbors were overly dramatic, I think you didn’t pay attention to people talking about neighborhood history. This was not always an industrial area. Homes and churches were slowly changed to industrial within the lifetimes of people present in the room. To use your own words, every change was only “slightly worse” than what was previously there, but the cumulative effect is real and neighbors are legitimately concerned about what the next “slightly worse” change will be. That these “slightly worse” changes have happened in one of the few historically black (Lytton was a freed slave who purchased the land) is not a coincidence to anyone who knows local history. Recent efforts to rezone the neighborhood schools to include a greater proportion of low income families and larger classes have heightened these concerns as more than a historical curiosity.