Category: Purple Line

, will cost an extra $148 million

According to news report, the opening of the long-awaited Purple Line has been delayed yet again and is expected to open in spring 2027, state officials announced Friday. Originally slated to cost $5.6 billion, the half-done project will now cost an additional $148 million, bringing the total price tag to $9.4 billion.

Maryland’s Department of Transportation, Maryland Transit Administration and Purple Line Transit Partners will seek approval on Wednesday from the Board of Public Works for an extension of the contract deadline in the Purple Line Public-Private-Partnership agreement.

Originally scheduled to open in 2022, the 16.2-mile light-rail connecting Montgomery and Prince George’s counties has faced several hurdles throughout its construction. In 2016 a federal judge suspended an environmental approval that was later resolved by a lawsuit in the Purple Line’s favor. By then, construction was 11 months behind. Then in 2020 the design-build contractor dropped out of the project. For two years, Purple Line construction sites sat dormant until a new contactor was hired in 2022.

Last week, a spokesman for Gov. Larry Hogan said that the Purple Line is set to get full federal funding with an agreement signed “in the very near future,”

Gov. Larry Hogan and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao hammered out a deal following conversations on last Friday and Monday, according to reports. An agreement is expected to be signed next week, according to The Washington Post.

Earlier, President Trump’s 2018 budget proposal had put the future of the Purple Line at risk. If taht happened, local entities would be forced to pay for transportation-related items that did not have federal agreements.

If the agreement with the US Dept of Transportation is signed next week, construction begins this fall and wraps up in 2022 or 2023.

Good news! Last week, a federal appellate court ruled Wednesday the Purple Line can move forward despite an ongoing lawsuit against the project, the Washington Business Journal reports.

The ruling gives Maryland a green light to go after $900 million in federal grants for the $5.6 billion construction project — funding the Trump administration has proposed cutting, though the administration has said in budget documents it is still considering federal funding for the Purple Line.

Three judges of the Washington, D.C., court ruled in an appeal filed in an ongoing lawsuit that Maryland has “satisfied the stringent requirements” required for the court to grant a stay of U.S. District Judge Richard Leon’s August ruling. That ruling revoked the project’s federal Record of Decision, which is the federal environmental approval needed for the project to move forward.

Maryland officials have said vacating the project’s federal approval has prevented the state from signing a full funding grant agreement with the U.S. government. Signing the agreement would allow the state access to the $900 million in federal funds proposed for the light-rail line’s construction.

The appeals court ruling “will allow construction to commence and we will continue to do everything we possibly can to keep the Purple Line moving forward,” Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh tweeted last week.

In addition to the Purple Line, this project will transform and extend several trails, and create new ones. The unpaved, at-grade trail from Bethesda to Lyttonsville will be reconstructed as a paved trail with grade-separated crossings of major streets, extended to Silver Spring and rebranded as the Capital Crescent Trail.

Read more..