Governor Goes with BRT for CCT
Governor Martin O’Malley announced on May 11 that the locally preferred alternative for the Corridor Cities Transitway (CCT) will be Maryland’s first Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system operating along a 15-mile south corridor from the Shady Grove Metrorail station to the COMSAT facility near Clarksburg in Montgomery County.
“The CCT Bus Rapid Transit line will provide easy, accessible, cost efficient transportation for Montgomery County’s neighborhoods,” said Governor O’Malley. “This north-south transitway line will reduce our dependency on cars as we continue our goal to double public transit use by 2020.”
According to O’Malley, the CCT will support nearly 15,000 jobs in the corridor, help facilitate smart growth through mixed use development and can be built in a timely manner.
The BRT will connect major employment and residents centers in the corridor including, Shady Grove, King Farm, Crown Farm, Life Sciences Center, Kentlands, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Metropolitan Grove, Germantown and COMSAT.
“The significant economic advantages of implementing BRT is not lost on Montgomery County,” said Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett. “Bus Rapid Transit can be built sooner and at a significantly lower cost while complementing our master plan.”
Under the proposed plan, the CCT will be pedestrian friendly with a total of 16 stations. It is projected to carry 47,700 boardings a day by 2035. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2018 with service tentatively scheduled to begin in 2020.
Now the Maryland Transit Administration will submit the project to the Federal Transit Administration under its New Starts Program as the MTA prepares for the preliminary engineering phase of the project.
For more info: www.cctmaryland.com
Rockville Montgomery College students would have to walk an extra half mile to get from a BRT station to their campus. This means some disabled students will no longer be able to use the bus at all.
BRT gets a rousing “BOO!” from those who actually use the bus systems. Nobody wants this but people who don’t use either RideOn or MetroBus because they don’t like associating with a mixed group of incomes. There is no way this isn’t entirely damaging and wasteful – these so-called “choice” riders aren’t ever going to take a bus.