Purple Line (Maryland)

The Purple Line is a 16.2-mile (26.1 km) light rail line being built to link several Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C.: Bethesda, Silver Spring, College Park, and New Carrollton. Currently slated to open in late 2027, the line will also enable riders to move between the Maryland branches of the Red, Green, and Orange lines of the Washington Metro without riding into central Washington, and between all three lines of the MARC commuter rail system. The project is administered by the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA), an agency of the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT), and not the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), which operates Metro.
Throughout its decades-long planning process, the project was dogged by resistance, particularly from residents of the upscale community of Chevy Chase and members of the Columbia Country Club. From 2003 to 2006, Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich changed the proposed mode of transportation from light rail to bus rapid transit. Legal attempts to thwart the line continued even after construction had begun; but in December 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that Purple Line construction could continue despite these objections.
In 2016, a consortium headed by Fluor Enterprises won the $5.6 billion contract to design and build the Purple Line, then to operate and maintain it for 36 years. Construction began in August 2017. Work halted in September 2020, when the consortium withdrew from the contract, citing mounting delays and disputes with the state government. The project had already consumed $1.1 billion of the anticipated $2 billion construction cost.
A new general contractor was selected in November 2021, and a new contract was signed in April 2022. This new agreement added $3.7 billion to the total cost of building, running, and maintaining the Purple Line for 30 years, bringing it to $9.3 billion. Construction costs alone rose $1.46 billion, bringing the total to $3.4 billion. Full-scale construction activity resumed in summer 2022.
Costs rose and the opening date receded again in 2023 and 2024. As of March 2024, the estimated cost to build the line and operate it through 2057 was $9.53 billion, some $4 billion over the initial 2016 budget of $5.6 billion. Train service is expected to begin in December 2027.
The "Purple Line" has been the name of two different transit proposals. In 1994, John J. Corley Jr., an architect with Harry Weese Associates (which designed the Washington Metro system) proposed a multibillion-dollar Metro line around the 64-mile (103 km) Capital Beltway. This would have served as a "ring" line, connecting suburb to suburb and complementing the existing Metro lines, which radiate from Washington. (See Rapid transit#Network topologies.) In 1998, the Beltway Purple Line received considerable political support from Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan and Governor Parris Glendening, which was a $10 billion, 30-mile (48 km) line from National Harbor to Montgomery Mall.
In 1987, after CSX expressed a desire to abandon the Georgetown Branch rail line, Maryland leaders immediately started planning to repurpose it for transit and a hiking trail. The idea of adapting the railroad for a transit line dated back at least as far as 1970, when such a use was included in the October 1970 Master Plan for the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Planning Area. Montgomery County purchased its portion of the railroad right-of-way from CSX in 1988 and in 1989 budgeted $107 million to build a trolley between Bethesda and Silver Spring and a pair of trails between Silver Spring and the District.
Eventually, this proposal came known as the "Inner Purple Line" to distinguish it from the "Beltway Purple Line". By 2001, the "Beltway Purple Line" proposal had been abandoned as too costly and the name was attached to the Bethesda to New Carrollton line.
Robert Flanagan, the Maryland State Secretary of Transportation under Governor Robert Ehrlich, merged the Purple Line proposal with the Georgetown Branch Light Rail Transit (GBLRT) line. The GBLRT was proposed as a light rail transit line from Silver Spring westward, following the former Georgetown Branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, now a short CSX siding and the Capital Crescent Trail, to Bethesda.
In March 2003, the Ehrlich administration renamed the project the "Bi-County Transitway", reflecting a proposal by Ehrlich and Flanagan to use bus rapid transit instead of light rail, and because the name "Purple Line" seemed to suggest a new heavy-rail system like the color-named lines of the Washington Metro system. The new name did not catch on; several media outlets and most citizens continued to refer to the "Purple Line". In 2007, Governor Martin O'Malley and Secretary of Transportation John Porcari reverted to "Purple Line".
In January 2008, the O'Malley administration allocated $100 million within a six-year capital budget to complete design documents for state approval and funding of the Purple Line. In May 2008, it was projected that the Purple Line would have about 68,000 daily trips. A draft environmental impact study was issued on October 20, 2008. On December 22, 2008, Montgomery County planners endorsed building a light rail line rather than a bus line. On January 15, 2009, the county planning board also endorsed the light rail option, and County Executive Isiah Leggett has also expressed support. On October 21, 2009, members of the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board voted unanimously to approve the Purple Line light rail project for inclusion into the region's Constrained Long-Range Transportation Plan.
Planners proposed to use existing Washington Metro stations and to accept the WMATA's SmarTrip farecard. Metro's 2008 annual report envisioned that the Purple Line would be fully integrated with the existing Washington Metro transit system by 2030.
The proposed project drew support and opposition in the community:
In June 2015, the Purple Line was approved by Governor Larry Hogan, who opposed the project while campaigning in 2014. Hogan cancelled its sister project, the Baltimore Red Line, citing excessive costs, and reduced the state's contribution to the Purple Line from $700 million to $168 million, putting the difference toward highway construction. To make up the difference, Prince George's and Montgomery counties would contribute more money and the frequency of train service would be reduced.
The Purple Line was procured as a full design-build-finance-operate-maintain public–private partnership. On December 7, 2015, four teams composed of major American and international firms submitted their bids to realize the project:
On March 2, 2016, Hogan announced that the state had chosen Purple Line Transit Partners to build, operate, and maintain the Purple Line for $3.3 billion over 36 years, with service to start in late 2022.
On April 6, 2016, the Maryland Board of Public Works (composed of Hogan, State Treasurer Nancy K. Kopp, and State Comptroller Peter Franchot) unanimously approved the contract. The $5.6 billion contract is 876 pages long and, according to The Washington Post is "believed to be the most expensive government contract ever in Maryland" and "one of the largest public-private partnerships on a U.S. transportation project" ever. The contract approval allowed the MTA to finalize $900 million in federal construction grants.
In August 2016, U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon vacated the Purple Line's federal approval, ruling that the MTA and the Federal Transit Administration did not properly study whether Metro's maintenance issues and ridership decline would affect the Purple Line. Hogan responded that Leon's residence at the Columbia Country Club, a leading opponent of the line, represented a conflict of interest. A federal funding agreement cannot be signed without the reinstatement of the environmental approval, and Maryland had said it could not afford to build the Purple Line without sufficient federal funding. On August 21, 2017, despite the ongoing court case over the environmental analysis, $900 million of federal funding was granted for the light rail project. On December 19, 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in favor of the Purple Line, stating that declining ridership on the Washington Metro system does not require Maryland to complete a new environmental study for the Purple Line. This federal appeals court ruling allowed for construction to continue and effectively ended the three-year legal battle surrounding the light-rail line project.
In 2019, the Purple Line Transit Partners said the opening date would slip to 2023 or 2024.
On April 13, 2020, U.S. District Judge James Bredar dismissed the third and final lawsuit brought by opponents of the Purple Line.
By 2020, the project had accrued over $800 million in change orders from Purple Line Transit Partners and the opening date had slipped 32 months. On May 1, the consortium declared their intent to cease work on the line and withdraw from their contract. A temporary restraining order halted the company from quitting work, but it was lifted in September, and PLTP began packing up construction sites the following week. In November, MDOT announced that MTA had assumed many of the Purple Line's contracts, including the manufacturing of light-rail cars, operations, and maintenance, as well as design and construction contracts. On November 24, MDOT agreed to pay $250 million to PLTP to settle the costs of overruns, a move approved unanimously in mid-December by Maryland's Board of Public Works (BPW). Officials aimed to restart construction within nine months—i.e., fall 2021.
On November 5, 2021, Purple Line officials announced that the contract to finish construction would go to Maryland Transit Solutions: a joint venture of Dragados USA and OHL USA, both American subsidiaries of major Spanish construction firms. The contract was ultimately set at $2.3 billion, bringing total construction costs to $3.4 billion, some $1.46 billion over the 2016 plan.
As 2022 opened, state officials said the line would open in fall 2026. The new construction contract was approved by BPW on January 26, 2022, and signed in April 2022. Full-scale construction activity resumed in summer 2022. In June 2022, MTA said that 77% of the necessary utility relocations had been completed, and that the Glenridge Operations and Maintenance Facility was complete and in operation.
In January 2023, the estimated cost to build and operate the line for 36 years was $9.28 billion. In July 2023, MTA officials added $148 million to their construction-costs estimate, pushing the build-and-operate cost to $9.4 billion. The expected opening date was delayed to May 2027, more than five years later than first planned. The officials said the changes were due to the change of contractor, to inflation, and to labor shortages.
In March 2024, MTA officials asked the state's Board of Public Works to approve another $425 million for the project. The extra money would go toward construction costs and also extend the contract to operate the line to 2057. The request would boost the total cost to build and operate the line to about $9.53 billion, about $4 billion over the initial 2016 budget of $5.6 billion. It was the second-largest request for extra funds, after the 2022 addition. They also said the Purple Line was now forecast to open in late 2027. In December 2024 it was reported that construction of the new mezzanine at the Bethesda station, a complex design, has led to extensive cost overruns. The construction process at Bethesda has included extensive blasting operations.
The planned rail line will connect the existing Metro, MARC commuter rail, and Amtrak stations at:
The following stations are part of the "Locally Preferred Alternative" route approved by Governor Martin O'Malley on August 9, 2009:
Although the Purple Line is a 16-mile (28.8-km) east–west line between Bethesda and New Carrollton, there have been several proposals to expand the line further into Maryland or to mirror the Capital Beltway as a loop around the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. The Sierra Club has argued for a Purple Line that would "encircle Washington, D.C." and "connect existing suburban metro lines." Maryland Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown, while campaigning in 2006, similarly stated that he would "like to see the Purple Line go from Bethesda to across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge," adding, "Let's swing that boy all the way around" (a reference to having the Purple Line circle through Virginia and back to the line's point of origin in Bethesda).
An advocacy group known as "The Inner Purple Line Campaign" proposed that the Purple Line be extended westward to Tysons Corner and eastward to Largo, and that it could eventually cross the new Wilson Bridge from Suitland through Oxon Hill to Alexandria, eventually forming a rail line that encircles the city. The new Woodrow Wilson Bridge (I-495's southern crossing over the Potomac River) is built to carry a heavy or light rail line. Suggested stops along this proposed Purple Line expansion include:
The light rail vehicles designed to run on the Purple Line are being built by CAF at their Elmira, New York, facility. Each train is 140 feet (43 m) long, consists of 5 modules, and can carry up to 431 passengers (seated plus standing). CAF began testing the cars in 2020. Fabrication of all 130 modular car shells at the CAF facility in Spain was completed in June 2021. 26 of the 28 trains have been assembled as of February 2023. When the light rail vehicles were presented in the summer of 2024, they were the longest in the U.S.