Maryland state and transit officials gathered on Sept. 5 to mark the installation of the first section of track for the 16-mile Purple Line light-rail project. This is the second milestone the project has reached in six weeks following completion of the framework for the project’s Operations and Maintenance Facility.
“In Maryland, we are proud to be setting an example for the rest of the nation and the Purple Line is at the heart of our state’s infrastructure success story,” said Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. “Two years ago, when we broke ground on the Purple Line, I climbed into an excavator and personally helped get the construction underway. Since then, we’ve been grading, moving utilities, tunneling, and now we have begun building and laying the first segments of track.”
The governor’s office says the $5.6-billion project is the largest public-private partnership (P3) transit project in North America. Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) officials signed a P3 contract in March 2016 with the Purple Line Transit Partners to design, build, finance, operate and maintain the light-rail system. MDOT will be the owner of the project and its selected private partner, Purple Line Transit Partners, will implement the project on a design-build-finance-operate-maintain basis.
Purple Line Transit Partners closed on a $874.6-million Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) loan for construction of the project in 2016 and the following year, the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded a $900 million Full Funding Grant Agreement from the Federal Transit Administration’s Capital Investment Grants Program for the project.
The line will connect New Carrollton in Prince George’s County to Bethesda in Montgomery County. It will run east to west inside the Capital Beltway, with 21 stations connecting to: Metrorail’s Orange, Green, and Red lines; the MARC Brunswick, Camden and Penn lines; and Amtrak at New Carrollton. No firm opening date has been set, but the state and its partners have a goal of a late summer 2022 opening for the line.
