The state made the legal arguments Thursday as part of asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to issue a “writ of mandamus” requiring the federal judge handling the case to decide the entire lawsuit by a certain date.

AD

AD

“At this point, only a decision on all issues on a date established by an order from this court will provide the state with the certainty needed to determine its path forward for the project,” the state wrote.

That “path forward,” it said, consisted of three options: 1) ask an appellate court to restore the project’s environmental approval to allow the state to secure $900 million in federal funding while an expedited appeal is considered, 2) have the state do more environmental analysis on the Purple Line, as the trial judge has so far required, 3) cancel the project.

The state said only the Federal Transit Administration may appeal a ruling Monday by U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon that would add months of delay by requiring the state to redo the Purple Line’s ridership projections. The state may appeal only after Leon has ruled on the entire lawsuit, according to the filing. Without that ruling, the petition said, the Purple Line is “in limbo.”

AD

AD

Construction on the 16-mile line between Montgomery and Prince George’s counties was scheduled to start in October but was delayed after Leon revoked the project’s environmental approval in August, making it ineligible for federal funding.

The lawsuit — filed by two Chevy Chase residents and the Friends of the Capital Crescent Trail advocacy group — alleges that the Purple Line’s environmental impact study had numerous flaws, including the fact that the project’s ridership projections were done before Metro’s ridership began to fall steadily due, in part, to regular safety and maintenance problems.

In a recent court filing, the plaintiffs said the case doesn’t rise to the level of extraordinary circumstances required for an appellate court to impose deadlines on a trial court judge. Leon, they said, has been “conscientious” in handling the case, and his ruling on the ridership issue Monday makes the state’s petition for a speedy decision “moot.”

AD

AD

The appellate court, they said, should disregard the state’s arguments that every month of delay costs the project more than $13 million and the Purple Line’s cancellation would cost the state more than $800 million in sunk costs and contract termination penalties. Any financial consequences would be “self-inflicted,” they said, because the state signed a $5.6 billion public-partnership almost two years after the lawsuit was filed in 2014.

“At bottom, Maryland’s petition amounts to no more than a party’s dissatisfaction with how a trial court is handling litigation,” the plaintiffs wrote.

The state countered that the state’s financial losses would result from a delayed decision “in a case brought by a small group of people” who oppose a light-rail line that would be built near their homes.