Federal transit officials have determined that Metro’s safety problems and declining ridership would not have a significant enough impact on Maryland’s planned light-rail Purple Line to warrant updating the project’s environmental study, according to a court filing late Friday.
U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon is expected to consider the filing in deciding whether to dismiss a lawsuit that Purple Line opponents filed against the project on environmental grounds. Major construction on the 16-mile light-rail line between Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, which had been scheduled for late October, cannot begin until the lawsuit is resolved.
Leon ruled in August that, as the plaintiffs had argued, the FTA erred in not considering Metro’s declining ridership when it approved the Purple Line’s environmental study in 2014. Leon ordered that the project’s review be redone — a process that would have added months of delay.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Katherine Shaver over at Washington Post
