ROCKVILLE, Md. — Montgomery County executive Marc Elrich is accusing Maryland's governor of breaking a promise to thousands of county residents.
Elrich, a Democrat, has launched a campaign to push Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, to restore plans for a $500 million rapid transit project to zoom people past the jammed up traffic on I-270.
But the state says the county should build the Corridor Cities Transitway itself.
"It's bad, it's terrible actually," Sharanda Bey said. Bey is among the tens of thousands of people who suffer through one of the worst commutes in the region.
For 20 years, one of the plans to fix the jams on I-270 has been the Corridor Cities Transitway. The latest design is dedicated bus rapid transit lanes that would whisk commuters from Clarksburg to the Shady Grove Metro Station and the thousands of jobs at the developing Science City nearby.
"This is not a local road project," Elrich said. "This is a job project and an economic development project."
But a local road project is exactly what the Hogan Administration called Corridor Cities when it cut it out of the consolidated transit plan last month. The state said it had already spent $38 million on design and environmental impact studies.
"The bus route is located solely in one county, making Montgomery County the lead for future work," the state Department of Transportation said in a statement.
"The fact is, the success here means money for all the rest of the state. We will help fund projects all across the state," Elrich said.
But there's no sign so far the Hogan Administration will change course. And some county leaders say after two decades of planning, bus rapid transit for upper Montgomery may just have to wait for the next governor.
If you want a chance to give local and state transportation leaders your ideas on fixing the traffic mess, you can go to a transportation town hall Monday at 7 p.m. at the Germantown campus of Montgomery College in the Engineering Center Auditorium.
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