Montgomery County planners are scheduled to brief Gaithersburg's Mayor & Council on the County's "Corridor Forward: I-270 Transit Plan" at tonight's Mayor & Council meeting. The plan includes some long-delayed and unrealized transit projects, such as adding MARC capacity in the I-270 corridor, a Metro Red Line extension, and the Corridor Cities Transitway. From that standpoint, it makes practical sense.
But the plan includes a menu of developer pay-offs, such as extensions of the Purple Line that would obliterate the western segment of the Capital Crescent Trail, implementing coal-mining-style hilltop removals and clearcutting wooded areas from the southwest of downtown Bethesda to the D.C. line. It also calls for bizarre new actions in the County's ongoing War-on-Cars, such as actively taking steps to prevent any additional automobile capacity - for a corridor that is automobile-dependent!
As currently envisioned, the Corridor Forward plan can be summed up thusly: A taxpayer-funded payoff to the developers who fund all nine County Councilmembers' campaigns. It evens states as a goal improving access for Frederick County to the District, and to Tysons.
So it would give an economic boost to Frederick and Fairfax counties, further establish Montgomery as a bedroom community, increase development in the exurbs of Frederick (which the Council and their developer friends claim they oppose), and have you, the taxpayer, subsidize all of this, to boot. In short, it's a close runner up to Thrive 2050 for the Al Capone award.
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