Thursday, March 21, 2013

Thoughts on the Silver Spring Transit Center

It has been under construction for years and was supposed to open in 2009.  I expected it to be finished soon after I moved to the area, instead it is still under construction and uncertainty abounds about its future.

I saw an article today in the WaPo "Metro could walk away from taking over Silver Spring Transit Center."  Apparently, Metro could refuse to take over the transit center if they don't agree that whatever repairs are made are good enough.  It sounds like Foulger-Pratt doesn't have a plan yet about how to fix it.

How about this idea... If the transit center is unrepairable, what if the land where it is built (prime real estate adjacent to the metro station) is put up for bids for privately funded projects?  Let a developer build a big condo building on that site with the requirement that the transit center be included on the first three floors of that building.  That way perhaps a different private developer would build the whole thing without charging the country taxpayers, and we would finally get a transit center.

No comments:

Post a Comment