Purple Line Politics Not Green Enough

"Rail Gains Momentum As Purple Line Pick" appeared in a recent edition of The Washington Post and impressed me with its obtuseness to "green" considerations.

Some background: rapid transit in the Washington D.C. area is provided by "Metro," aka the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. Metro runs Metrorail, as well as the Metrobus bus service. Metrorail is mostly a subway system in D.C. itself, an above-ground system outside the center city. The rail system has several lines, identified by colors: the Red Line, the Green Line, etc.:



Now comes a proposal for a new Purple Line:



The Purple Line is to link various locations in Montgomery and Prince Georges counties, in suburban Maryland just outside the District of Columbia. But will it be light rail (left), or bus rapid transit (right)? If the former, the cost to build it could be double or even triple the cost of implementing rapid bus service.

The Post article gives many of the ins and outs of making the choice ... but what it fails to do is tell which option is "greener"!

Light rail would be slightly faster, end to end. It would be more reliable than buses, since it can't get snared in traffic tie-ups. And it would foster more needed redevelopment in the increasingly seedy areas near its stations, since the bus route could always be changed and the rail route couldn't.

Also, light rail advocates say their choice would be "snazzier" and attract more ridership from the denizens of the depressed areas along its route, giving them more of what, in their own eyes, they deserve. A bus system would only reinforce to them that they are second-class citizens.

Fine, but it would seem to me that the clinching argument for light rail over bus is that electrically powered light rail would spew less carbon into the atmosphere than gasoline-powered buses. Or would it? The article doesn't even mention the topic. For shame, Washington Post!