BETHESDA TO SILVER SPRING METRO

[Anonymous]

Does anyone travel from Bethesda to Silver Spring or from Silver Spring to Bethesda on the Metro (RED LINE) or other form of Metro transportation on a regular basis?


If so, I would love to get some quotes from you for my article about the Purple Line, which will eliminate 14 stops on the Red Line.


I'm a student journalist at the University of Maryland.
Contact me @ [e-mail] if you can speak with me!!

It'd be greatly appreciated

[Anonymous]

Exactly how will the Purple Line "eliminate" 14 stops on the Red Line? What about all the stops ON the Purple Line? We live in Takoma Park and commute from Takoma to Tenleytown/AU. Please tell me more about how the Purple Line will make that trip faster (and safer!). Lest you think me overly snarky, believe me, I would LOVE for you to prove me wrong with your info and data. Please spill.

[Anonymous]

Okay, first this specifically pertains to Bethesda to Silver Spring.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/about/image/metro2.gif (From Bethesda to Silver Spring on the Red Line = 17 stops)

Purple Line - http://www.purplelinemd.com/images/stories/purpleline_documents/lpa/purple_line_lpa_map_2010-04-14.pdf (5 stops away)

12 stops, not 14. Either way, that's an awesome difference.


But in terms of Takoma Park to Tenleytown ... you currently have 14 stops. With the Purple Line, you'll have 11 stops.


Not a big difference, but it's a difference nonetheless.

[Anonymous]

I would be surprised if anyone regularly (or ever?) takes the Red Line from Bethesda to Silver Spring. The J buses (J1, J2, J3) would be so much more direct and faster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would be surprised if anyone regularly (or ever?) takes the Red Line from Bethesda to Silver Spring. The J buses (J1, J2, J3) would be so much more direct and faster.

Ditto this. Hope you'll do your research before writing the article, because this is a complicated topic and it sounds like you already oversimplified it and jumped to some conclusions without educating yourself. The purple line "market" would be J bus users, not red line users. Or perhaps people currently driving... A ton has been written about the purple line proposals; time for you to read up. Good luck with your assignment.

[Anonymous]

I do know some who use the Red Line to go to these areas, therefore it's not a completely illogical conclusion. Though, I guess these aren't the smartest of people. But I will take your comments into consideration for my article.

Thanks for the criticisms, DC Urban Moms and Dads!

[Anonymous]

I used to commute from Petworth to Shady Grove, and the Purple Line would have made a real difference to me--could have just taken the Georgia Ave. bus up to Silver Spring & then Purple & Red from there. As it was I had a choice of taking the Green line downtown to Gallery Place and then all the way out on the Red Line, or the E-series crosstown bus to Friendship Heights & then the Red Line all the way out. In both cases, I was very conscious of how much time I was losing by going so far south (or by taking a very slow bus).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would be surprised if anyone regularly (or ever?) takes the Red Line from Bethesda to Silver Spring. The J buses (J1, J2, J3) would be so much more direct and faster.

Ditto this. Hope you'll do your research before writing the article, because this is a complicated topic and it sounds like you already oversimplified it and jumped to some conclusions without educating yourself. The purple line "market" would be J bus users, not red line users. Or perhaps people currently driving... A ton has been written about the purple line proposals; time for you to read up. Good luck with your assignment.

Aw come on, harpies. Give the student journalist a break. She is doing research. I think PPs here are right about the alternatives that are currently in place, but there are kinder ways of saying so. Especially since you have no idea how early on this person is in her research. She's a student journalist, so it's not like this is some WaPo reporter who doesn't understand her own beat. Ease up!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would be surprised if anyone regularly (or ever?) takes the Red Line from Bethesda to Silver Spring. The J buses (J1, J2, J3) would be so much more direct and faster.

Ditto this. Hope you'll do your research before writing the article, because this is a complicated topic and it sounds like you already oversimplified it and jumped to some conclusions without educating yourself. The purple line "market" would be J bus users, not red line users. Or perhaps people currently driving... A ton has been written about the purple line proposals; time for you to read up. Good luck with your assignment.

Aw come on, harpies. Give the student journalist a break. She is doing research. I think PPs here are right about the alternatives that are currently in place, but there are kinder ways of saying so. Especially since you have no idea how early on this person is in her research. She's a student journalist, so it's not like this is some WaPo reporter who doesn't understand her own beat. Ease up!

Maybe she is a Wapo reporter in disguise!

[Anonymous]

Agree re: the bus. I used to go from Silver Spring to AU and I always always always bused it (S bus to, I think the E bus). Red line would have been too much hassle.

[Anonymous]

This takes me back to my student journalism days.

[Anonymous]

I've ridden the bus too, and while it's faster than taking the Red Line all the way around, it's still pretty slow. I think having a Purple Line would make the trip much faster, and would get lots of people out of cars who choose to drive that route rather than bus it. In theory, it also would be a commercial benefit to businesses in both Bethesda and Silver Spring.

I understand there are complex property and construction cost issues, so it's not as simple as I'm making it sound. But it's not accurate to simply dismiss the project by saying "a bus already goes there."

[Anonymous]

You need to change yoru questions to: what is the purpose of the purple line? To lighten the traffic going east and west, but spend sometime sitting on a corner at Connecticut Ave and Jones Bridge and East West Highway and along the proposed route (hold a sign with a up and you can pay for your education). The people in the cars transporting their kids to and from activities are nto going to put their kids on the purple line, the traffic builds for rush hour, no matter how wide you build a road, how big you make a train, the rush hour will always be busy. You can't reduce the volume, if you widen a road, the builders will build up around it bringing in more cars. Here is a perfect example, the Dulles Toll Raod, look at the history of the access road and then why the toll road was built, you will find that once they built the access road, the farms were soon bought up and homes built and now look how the traffic there, the road has been expanded several times, and still backed up during rush hour,

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You need to change yoru questions to: what is the purpose of the purple line? To lighten the traffic going east and west, but spend sometime sitting on a corner at Connecticut Ave and Jones Bridge and East West Highway and along the proposed route (hold a sign with a up and you can pay for your education). The people in the cars transporting their kids to and from activities are nto going to put their kids on the purple line, the traffic builds for rush hour, no matter how wide you build a road, how big you make a train, the rush hour will always be busy. You can't reduce the volume, if you widen a road, the builders will build up around it bringing in more cars. Here is a perfect example, the Dulles Toll Raod, look at the history of the access road and then why the toll road was built, you will find that once they built the access road, the farms were soon bought up and homes built and now look how the traffic there, the road has been expanded several times, and still backed up during rush hour,

Petworth to Shady Grove commuter here, and I disagree with your basic premise. I don't think that the purpose is do reduce east-west traffic; it's to provide a good transit alternative for such trips. There are lots of people in this region who would prefer to take transit for many (not all, but many) trips, and the currently-available bus service just doesn't cut it (among other things, those buses get caught in the same rush-hour traffic that everyone else does).

The old hub-and-spoke design of Metro doesn't make sense in light of the increasing amounts of intra-suburb commuting (and strange commuting patterns like mine).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've ridden the bus too, and while it's faster than taking the Red Line all the way around, it's still pretty slow. I think having a Purple Line would make the trip much faster, and would get lots of people out of cars who choose to drive that route rather than bus it. In theory, it also would be a commercial benefit to businesses in both Bethesda and Silver Spring.

I understand there are complex property and construction cost issues, so it's not as simple as I'm making it sound. But it's not accurate to simply dismiss the project by saying "a bus already goes there."

Yep, I wouldn't be so fast to assume that everyone takes the bus. If you're not going to Bethesda but instead are going further up or down the line to where the buses don't go, the metro might make sense. When I worked in Silver Spring, I knew a co-worker who felt it was faster to take the metro around to a stop on the upper western red line. Especially because aren't the J buses, primarily rush hour buses or am I wrong about that? The 5 Rideon is a pleasant ride over to White Flint (where my office moved -- I take it because my doc is in Silver Spring) but I don't think it's as fast as the J buses.