King Farm Blvd and its extra-wide median, designed and built specifically to accommodate a transitway.

If the Corridor Cities Transitway is built, it will be built along the King Farm Boulevard alignment that has been planned for decades, despite opposition from the Rockville City Council.

The King Farm neighborhood of Rockville was designed and built in the 1990s, specifically with the intention that a future Corridor Cities Transitway extending west from Shady Grove Metro station would serve as the spine of the community. King Farm Boulevard, the neighborhood’s main street, was intended to be the alignment of that transitway, and was constructed with a wide grassy median to accommodate it. For 16 years the City of Rockville steadfastly supported and planned around having the Corridor Cities Transitway in King Farm.

Then in January of 2011 a small number of neighborhood activists complained, and the City Council reversed years of planning to request that Maryland reroute the transitway outside of King Farm.

In April, the State of Maryland responded. Rockville has its answer, and it’s a resounding ‘no way’.

According to Maryland Department of Transportation Secretary Beverley Swaim-Staley, any realignment outside of King Farm would increase costs, reduce ridership, lengthen trip times for riders, and would not meet Federal Transit Administration regulations. Swaim-Staley puts simply: “A King Farm Boulevard option is the most reasonable and effective for the project.”

Good work, MTA, for following through with a good decision and not bowing to a truly ridiculous example of anti-transit paranoia.

Cross-posted at Greater Greater Washington.