Lessons from the ICC bike trail.

Our most recent walk of the future Purple Line/CCT alignment was held under beautiful weather (at last) on May 3. Several of the dozen hikers who began the walk opted to walk the entire 5 miles with me to Bethesda.

One of the hikers was convinced that promises to rebuild the CCT alongside the Purple Line were empty promises being made by public officials to get the public to accept the project, and that the CCT would be taken out of the project later, as "not essential", to reduce costs.

How can we trust government to keep its promises for the CCT when we have the ICC Bike Trail as an example? Local and state government have just stripped much of that important bike trail out of the project after "discovering" late in the process that the trail adds to the cost and environmental impact of this multi-lane highway project. We can still afford the cost and environmental impact of a billion dollar ICC roadway, but apparently cannot afford the cost and environmental impact of the trail alongside it. The evident hypocracy of this position is explored in the WashCycle blog.

There are strong similarities between the ICC Bike Trail and the CCT:

Politicians and public officials promise a first class trail early in the project process to get public support.

The trail marginally adds cost and environmental impacts to the project.

We can expect local and state government to be under pressure to trim the project back after the project is approved and the actual costs start to exceed the estimated costs.

But there are also very strong differences between the ICC Bike Trail and the CCT:

The Purple Line/CCT project between Bethesda and Silver Spring will be built in officially recognized transportation corridors, and not through parks or wetlands. There are trees within the Georgetown Branch transportation corridor that must be replaced by planting trees elsewhere, but nonetheless this is an old railroad corridor and is not a park. This is in direct contrast to the ICC which must be built through several sensitive parklands, and where the Sierra Club opposes the ICC Bike Trail as adding to the park destruction. Environmental groups including the Sierra Club support the Purple Line/CCT project as being environmentally friendly overall.

An Interim CCT is already in place with over 10,000 uses each week. A powerful trail constituency has been established. Several advocacy groups have formed to protect the CCT, including the Coalition for the Capital Crescent Trail, and are ready and able to mount a public outcry and to raise legal challenges in response to any effort to strip the CCT from the Purple Line project. This is in contrast to the ICC, where the trail is still only a vision and has not developed a broad constituency.

The CCT is an integral part of the Purple Line project. Light-rail depends upon easy access to local stations for its ridership. The Purple Line concepts being evaluated in the Preliminary Environmental Impact Statement/Alternatives Analysis (PEIS/AA) include the CCT as an integral feature that provides important pedestrian access to the transit stations. Removing the trail after the project that is based on these designs has been approved by the Federal Government would invite a serious legal challenge to the project. This is in contrast to the ICC, where the ICC Trail has no significant functional interaction with the highway and can be removed without compromising the roadway usage.

A friend once commented during a discussion about trusting government: "No matter how cynical you are, it is not enough!" I trust transportation bureaucrats to know when their project can be stopped by legal challenges. I also trust elected officials to know their careers can end if they break their promise to protect the most popular trail in the region. Do I trust too much?