When Montgomery County’s latest six-year capital budget plan is unveiled by County Executive Marc Elrich (D) later this week, it will likely underscore the ever-escalating price of the much-delayed Purple Line light-rail project.
The overall cost of constructing the 16.2-mile Purple Line—five years behind schedule and still nearly two years away from transporting passengers—has doubled over the past decade, from $2 billion in 2015 to nearly $4 billion today.
But while much of this increase has been absorbed by the state, many of the factors that contributed to it—persistent inflation, global supply-chain disruptions and skilled labor shortages—also have substantially affected two major projects for which Montgomery County is responsible for shouldering the cost.
One involves major modifications to the Bethesda Metro station, where the western end of the Purple Line—owned by the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA)—will intersect with Metro’s Red Line. The other relates to work on the 4.3-mile Capital Crescent Trail extending from downtown Bethesda to downtown Silver Spring adjacent to the Purple Line; a proposed Capital Crescent Trail tunnel under Wisconsin Avenue has been in limbo since 2020 amid mushrooming cost estimates.
In 2014, Montgomery County’s commitment to the Purple Line stood at about $120 million – approximately the same amount as neighboring Prince George’s County, where the light-rail line will run through the University of Maryland at College Park to an eastern terminus at the Amtrak station in New Carrollton.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Louis Peck over at Bethesda Magazine
