I appreciated Governor O’Malley inviting me to speak on behalf of the Council yesterday at an event announcing almost an $1 billion in new state transportation funding for Montgomery County, including $400 million for the Purple Line, along with new funding for the Brookeville Bypass (a high priority in my district), for the Corridor Cities Transitway (a planned transit line along the I-270 corridor), and several other important projects.
The Governor and Lt. Governor Brown also announced that they will seek to find a private partner to help finance and build the Purple Line. This will be the first time the State has used a Public Private Partnership (P3), an innovative funding mechanism, to finance a transit project of this scale.
I was also joined at the announcement by County Executive Leggett, Prince George’s County Executive Baker, many of my Council colleagues, members of our state delegation, a number of municipal leaders. I was happy to see many pro-Purple Line activists in the audience, some of whom have been working for years, even decades, to get us to this point.
