Montgomery County planners are recommending bus rapid transit for the Corridor Cities Transitway rather than light rail. This is unfortunate, since BRT is no replacement for bona fide rail, but not unsurprising given the fiscal constraints. As I said last year when the planning team started leaning towards BRT:

With massive amounts of Maryland transportation dollars sunk into the ICC, and with the (more deserving) Purple line and Baltimore Red line competing for the measly transit money that does remain available, the Corridor Cities Transitway is most likely to be the odd one out. The decision to do BRT in Gaithersburg is probably a good one *if* it means we get light rail in Baltimore and Silver Spring.

Why is the CCT less deserving than the other two? Because it’s in a far less dense, less transit dependent area and because the planned route is terrible. I grew up in Gaithersburg and deeply hope that it can be a great city one day, with great infrastructure, but even I can’t seriously argue that rail there should come before rail from Bethesda to Silver Spring or across downtown Baltimore. In a better world we’d have enough money to do everything, but in the real world tough decisions have to be made and sometimes worthy projects have to be cut.

All that having been said, if Maryland spends one cent on this baloney, then you can ignore everything I just said because the state’s priorities are clearly out of whack. You don’t waste $3.8 billion on a highway widening then turn around and say there’s not enough money for light rail.