Tag Archives: Purple Line

Infrastructure and Social Justice

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I recently participated in a Society for Industrial Archeology online program featuring projects with a social justice element. The SIA program titled, “Infrastructure and Social Justice” included a presentation on a Tennessee bridge used during the Trail of Tears and a viaduct in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Infrastructure and racial segregation have a long and fraught history. Railroads and highways frequently created firm boundaries separating racialized spaces. Many cities throughout North America have their “other side of the tracks” or interstate highways that were built to separate Black neighborhoods from white ones. In some places, like Detroit, Michigan; Decatur, Georgia; and, North Brentwood, Maryland, walls and other barricades divided Black space from white space.

Railroad tracks, Decatur, Georgia.

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Is the Purple Line a pig in a poke?

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Purple Line construction sign.

Some Montgomery County, Maryland, residents think they’ve been sold a pig in a poke as far as the Purple Line is concerned. Early on, they enthusiastically supported the 16-mile light rail project linking Langley Park and Bethesda. But after construction started and some of the short- and long-term impacts began appearing, their opinions changed.

Whether it’s the observant Jews who will lose a key walking route to synagogue or the homeowners whose new neighbors include piles of cut trees, trash, and vermin, one thing has become clear ever since construction began in 2017: the new light rail line has a bigger price tag than Maryland transportation officials told people during nearly 30 years of planning.

“Under any circumstances where construction is taking place, you have to expect a level of inconvenience for a window of time,” said Leslie Herrera, a Silver Spring resident whose house abuts the Purple Line corridor in Lyttonsville. Once a big Purple Line advocate, Herrera has soured on the project.

She cites the piles of cut trees, trash, and animals, and unresponsive Purple Line officials as the reasons. “I’ve been to all of the meetings but one and it’s generally the same. It’s generally the same. They say they’ll get back to you. You call, no answer. No call back,” she said while standing near a clear-cut lot next to her home.

Cut trees, debris piles, and trash in the Purple Line clearcut corridor behind homes along Pennsylvania Avenue in Silver Spring’s Lyttonsville neighborhood.

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How a bridge closing underscores need for local journalism

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Yesterday evening, the Purple Line Transit Partners and Montgomery County’s Department of Transportation closed the Lyttonsville Place Bridge. The six-month closure will allow for the demolition and reconstruction of a new bridge to accommodate the Purple Line light rail.

Though local news outlets have covered the controversial bridge closing for the past several months, not a single journalist has written about Lyttonsville residents’ claims that the bridge closure and a detour using a street closed during urban renewal in the 1970s is environmental racism.  And, no journalists have covered the community’s search for a civil rights lawyer to take up their claim that the detour and bridge closing violate the National Environmental Policy Act and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by introducing impacts to the community that should have been evaluated under the law’s environmental justice requirements. Continue reading →

Environmental racism along the Purple Line

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Not a single length of track has yet been laid for Maryland’s new suburban light rail line, the Purple Line, yet there already are complaints of environmental racism coming from the historically African American Lyttonsville community. Though much of the environmental/social justice and equity concerns about the Purple Line have focused on displacement once the line opens, virtually no attention has been focused on the externalities communities like Lyttonsville are bearing during the construction phase.

Over the past few weeks, the entity selected to build the Purple Line (Purple Line Transit Partners), the Maryland Transit Administration, and the Montgomery County Department of Transportation have been trying to figure out how to mitigate the impacts of closing the Lyttonsville Place Bridge, a structure spanning the new Purple Line corridor (an abandoned former B&O industrial railroad line) connecting Brookville Road and the Lyttonsville community. Lyttonsville has been partially isolated since April 2017 when the Montgomery County DOT declared the historic Talbot Avenue Bridge unsafe and closed it. If the Lyttonsville Place Bridge is closed (for up to six months, according  to transportation officials), that will leave Lyttonsville residents and emergency responders with limited options for entering and leaving the community.

The Past is Prologue

Denise Watkins, facilitator, opens the April 3, 2018 Purple Line community meeting.

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Faux homes help new light rail infrastructure blend in D.C. suburbs

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Possible Purple Line substation house. MTA photo.

Possible Purple Line substation house. MTA photo.

The Purple Line is a proposed 16-mile light rail corridor. Once completed, it will link suburban communities north of the nation’s capital in Maryland’s Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. First proposed more than a decade ago, state officials breathed new life into the project in 2007 to connect Metro transit stations in New Carrolton and Bethesda as well as the business districts between the two communities.

Planning for the project, including engineering and environmental studies, are underway. Construction could begin as early as 2015 if funding is secured.

Purple Line route. MTA map.

Purple Line route. MTA map.

The Purple Line will require multiple support structures and buildings, including 18 power substations, 14 signal bungalows (small buildings with radio and signal equipment), and a nine-story ventilation tower in Bethesda’s central business district. Residents who live along the proposed alignment told the Washington Post that they are concerned about potential impacts from the power facilities known as traction power substations. Continue reading →