It’s finally happening: Purple Line construction will begin to make serious inroads into the Route 1 corridor later this month in College Park, city officials announced July 9. Two lanes will be closed initially on Campus Drive.
The lane closures are needed to stage equipment and build tracks for the light-rail line along Campus Drive. Near Rhode Island Avenue, the track will turn into the northern-most limits of the city’s old-town neighborhood, where it will cut south of The Hotel at the University of Maryland along the aptly-named Hotel Drive. From there it will cross Baltimore Avenue and the campus beyond on its way to Bethesda.
Eventually, all the lanes of Campus Drive will need to be closed in order to accommodate the construction, though full closure of the roadway is not expected until 2020. The project’s biggest task in this area is re-engineering the roadway so that the Purple Line’s 145-foot tramcars can fit underneath Campus Drive’s Camden Line, CSX freight and Metrorail overpasses.
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