Press Releases - Department of Transportation

For Immediate Release: Monday, July 20, 2020

Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich, in a letter to Maryland Department of Transportation Secretary Greg Slater, said that the community needs more time to review and respond to the complex and lengthy Draft Environmental Impact Study (DEIS) for the proposed managed lanes project for I-495 and I-270. County Executive Elrich requested that the State “extend the time for comment to at least 120 days (preferably longer).”

The County Executive went on to write: “My bigger concern is that you are expecting the community, as well as volunteer organizations, to read and digest almost 18,000 pages in 90 days. People need time to absorb information, to think about their questions and to construct a meaningful response to you, and the 90-day timeline simply doesn't allow it.

“And in the bigger picture, the crisis with the Purple Line Concessionaire indicates that we are not well positioned to construct a good public private partnership (P3) project. Without an in-depth analysis of what went wrong and what needs to be done differently, it is difficult to have confidence in the State's ability to get into another P3 that will protect the state's long-term interests.”

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