By Adam Pagnucco.
On April 28, 2006, the Washington Post printed this:
Man, 2 Children Hit by Car
Two small children, ages 5 and 2, and a man in his fifties were seriously injured yesterday when they were struck by a car on Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring, a spokesman for the county fire and rescue department said.
The incident occurred about 7 p.m. as they were crossing the avenue near the Forest Glen Metro station, the spokesman said.
This was the final straw that led to an all-out revolt in the Forest Estates neighborhood, based to the northeast of the Georgia Avenue-Forest Glen Road intersection. Tired of the life-threatening dangers of crossing 13 lanes of traffic to get to the Forest Glen Metro Station, neighbors demanded that a new Metro entrance be constructed on the eastern side of Georgia. I was one of them.
2006 was an election year. My civic association formed the Crossing Georgia Committee, which began rounding up commitments from state and county candidates to build the new Metro entrance. We were armed with a website, a petition drive and the YouTube video below showing the menacing dangers of crossing Georgia.
How would you like to walk through this intersection?
One of the biggest supporters of the Metro entrance was Marc Elrich, who was then running for a county council at-large seat. Elrich had grown up near the west side of the intersection and knew it well. We spent 45 minutes at that intersection together watching pedestrians struggle to cross. Elrich wrote the letter to my neighbors shown below. I delivered it to every door in my neighborhood and he won a big margin in my precinct, helping cement his first win for county office.
Another big supporter was Delegate Rich Madaleno, who was running unopposed for a state senate seat. He told us, “I raise this subject with the State Highway Administrator and the Secretary of Transportation every time we see each other. I share your frustration over the situation and assure you that, along with my colleagues, I will continue to push for a pedestrian tunnel as well as other short-term improvements.”
We didn’t know it at the time, but many years later, Marc and Rich would become the two most powerful officials in Montgomery County government as the county executive and chief administrative officer. So you might figure that the Metro entrance would be built by now, yeah?
If so, you would be wrong.
A page from our flyer. We handed out thousands of these in 2006 and 2007.
It took many years of advocacy but my now-former neighbors finally got the Metro entrance into the county’s capital budget as a stand-alone project in 2018. (I moved out of the neighborhood a decade ago and am no longer involved with the civic association.) In its original version, the project’s cost was $20 million. Its schedule was set to begin in FY21 and it was supposed to be completed around FY25. Later that year, Elrich became county executive. Madaleno became his first budget director and was promoted to chief administrative officer, the top management position in county government, in 2020.
In the middle of FY21, the project changed. Its cost estimate ballooned to $41 million and it was delayed to start in FY22, with completion scheduled for some point after FY27. The rationale for the delay was “fiscal capacity.” Two years later, the project’s schedule was delayed again, with land acquisition, site improvements and utilities and construction put off by a year each. This year, the executive is recommending yet another delay as the cost has increased to $44 million. Now the project is not supposed to be completed until FY30 assuming it does not slip again. And every future delay will result in an increased cost estimate, thereby providing a rationale for even more delays.
That’s 24 years to completion and counting after two children were run over at this intersection.
And as for the money? The county’s operating revenues have come in at $455 million above estimates over the last two fiscal years. That’s enough to build several Forest Glen Metro entrances.
For as long as I have known Elrich, he has complained that new development is not accompanied by the infrastructure needed to support it, especially with regards to transit. He has a point about that. Right now, the biggest controversy facing the neighborhood is a new residential building proposed for the northeast corner of the Georgia-Forest Glen intersection, where the new Metro entrance is supposed to be. The building itself is not the problem, but its proposed access to a neighborhood street for its auto traffic is. It’s preposterous that a project virtually on top of a Metro station is causing controversy with its car usage, especially given the fact that the county council just removed parking requirements for projects near Metro stations, but that’s what is happening. New development should be accompanied by new infrastructure – in this case, a Metro entrance. But because of county government delays, it may not be. This is just the sort of thing that Elrich has railed against for years. And now his own administration is part of the problem.
Many neighborhood organizations fight against projects that they believe are bad. Back in 2006, my neighbors and I fought for something that was good. The Forest Glen Metro entrance represents everything that is positive about Montgomery County transportation and land use policies. It is intended to encourage pedestrian access to transit at one of the most car-choked intersections in the region. And the infrastructure it provides will facilitate transit-adjacent housing, another thing that the region badly needs. Pedestrian safety, transit use and Metro-accessible housing is the right agenda for Montgomery County and the Forest Glen Metro entrance helps us get there.
Elrich wants another delay. The county council must say no.
Build the Forest Glen Metro Entrance Now.