WASHINGTON — The city of Rockville, Maryland — home to Montgomery County courts, county government and such businesses as Choice Hotels International — gets half as much Metrorail service as it did in years past.
“Every other train stops at [Grosvenor-Strathmore], turns around and goes back into D.C.,” said Rockville Mayor Bridget Donnell Newton.
The mayor appeared at a public Metro budget hearing Wednesday evening to ask the transit agency to fulfill its promise of restoring full rail service to the city this summer.
“The city of Rockville grows by over 100,000 people every day due to people coming in for the courts, the county and jobs,” said Donnell Newton.
“If we want to continue taking people off roads, we’ve got to be able to have surety on Metro,” she said.
“[Montgomery] County has an agreement with WMATA that, as of the summer of ’18, full service would return. But what is proposed with this budget is to continue with the every-other train [service].”
Metro is working on a $3.2 billion budget for fiscal year 2019, which begins in July.
Rockville has lived up to its pledge to focus residential and commercial development near Metro stations, the mayor said. And now the community wants Metro to honor the agreement by letting the trains roll on beyond Grosvenor-Strathmore to the other four stations on the Red Line: White Flint, Twinbrook, Rockville and Shady Grove.
