I’m certain you’d prefer the freeways that would covered and destroyed large swathes of DC, which was the only alternative to the Metro subway. Of course those newly blighted areas in the shadows of the freeways would have become crime free utopias. |
And where will the new jobs for the new residents be on the Purple Line? You seem to envision economic growth without jobs. It doesn’t work that way. You need new jobs. A lot of new jobs that pay high salaries. Unless the left YIMBYs get behind repealing the energy tax and the local minimum wage (just to start) and some pro-business policies, there will be no jobs and the Purple Line will be a huge loser that underperforms even on the easy things like driving housing supply growth. |
Well, sure, if you want to. You could also question whether Roman coliseum was worth its drag on state finances, and you'd have the same impact. |
It's funny that you think the county needs jobs that pay well, but also the county should repeal the requirement that jobs pay well. |
$17.15 an hour is not a job that pays well. In fact it makes you eligible for deeply affordable subsidized housing. We need jobs that actually pay well so that we have money for subsidies for people who have low-paying jobs. Thanks again for proving that left YIMBYs are innumerate and should stop weighing in on public investment and economics. |
I wouldn’t worry too much. There are plenty of areas not near metro that attract the riff raff. Bethesda is not that interesting esp compared to national harbor, rio center and the wharf.
The purple line may start low on ridership but will grow. I for one will use it to avoid looping thru DC to get from my house to Bethesda. |
What's the problem with the jobs these residents already have? The unemployment rate in MOCO is like 2.7%. |
Most of them leave the county to work in Fairfax or DC. It’s why housing production in MoCo is sluggish and the lack of a business base forces the county to keep raising property tax rates. It also causes horrendous traffic that’s bad for the environment. |
According to various state and federal agencies, the American Legion/Cabin John Bridge will need to be completely replaced within the next 6 years. Maybe, just as Va, DC, and Md planned with the Wilson Bridge rebuild many years ago, the new American Legion Bridge will have room for future high capacity rapid transit of some kind (metro rail, rapid bus, etc.) between Bethesda and Tysons. Metro Rail would be nice, but that will likely have to wait until the high priority Metro Bloop is up and running. |
And they pay income and property taxes in MOCo. I just said there will be apartments along transit.... |
It would be tragic for us if you were in a position to influence decisions, though I fear you might be because this sounds so much like the drivel we get from planning and the council. People are at best a break-even proposition on average. Some pay taxes but they all consume a lot of services, especially if they moved here for the schools. Businesses pay a lot of taxes but consume little in the way of services. It’s hard to make a local government budget work without growing commercial real estate taxes. |
So now the complaint is we need commercial real estate (not jobs). So we go back to the pont already made: we have apartments and commercial real estate being built along purple line stops. |
If the commercial real estate tax base is growing it necessarily means you also have declining office vacancies, more office construction, and more jobs. We have apartments (the worst kind of development for the tax base because they’re under-assessed and usually cash flow negative from the government’s perspective) but not much commercial office because the business environment is terrible in MoCo. The point you’re missing is that the Purple Line is very unlikely to result in job growth because of other factors suppressing job growth along the Purple Line, so we will never realize the value of the investment. The lack of job growth will also cause housing production to underperform and hurt government revenue, eventually resulting in a reduction in services. |
DP. Isn’t a new technology park with lots of future jobs planned for the Purple Line stops just east of the UMD campus? And I think PG County is positioning New Carrollton as a center for high income jobs, i.e., offices and supporting infrastructure. But what’s with the old Discovery Media HQ building in Silver Spring? Is it now part of Children’s Hospital? I was hoping some other HQ would relocate there. |
It's going to be tough to sell growth to someone that doesn't want the county to grow. |