State Transportation Secretary Robert L. Flanagan announced in March that his department would consider building a rapid bus line along Jones Bridge Road, from downtown Silver Spring to the Medical Center Metro station in Bethesda. The project would eliminate the need to build the Inner Purple Line, a primarily above-ground, light-rail project that would run along the interim Georgetown Branch hiker-biker trail into downtown Bethesda.

The County Council voted to support the Inner Purple Line in February, but upon hearing Flanagan's announcement, directed staff at the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission to conduct a quick analysis of the busway proposal. Planning staff presented its analysis at a public forum June 18, with lackluster enthusiasm.

"We had three months," said Alex Hekimian, transportation coordinator at Parks and Planning. "This is easily a six-month or more study. We weren't able to go into as much detail as we'd like."

Speaking with residents in attendance, Hekimian came directly to the point. "We don't like this," he said. "We're not pushing this plan, but we have to analyze it. The state is looking for an alternative to the Purple Line. ... They're not sure they want to put light rail in."

As conceived by county planners, the busway would run in dedicated lanes on Jones Bridge Road from its intersection with Jones Mill Road in Chevy Chase west to the Medical Center Metro station. Jones Bridge Road would require widening to accommodate the buses, which would probably run every three minutes.

The east end of the busway would connect to the Georgetown Branch Interim Trail where it intersects with Jones Bridge and Jones Mill roads, and would continue along the trail to Silver Spring, said Richard Hawthorne, chief of transportation planning. The problems arise at the western terminus in Bethesda, because it would require building a bus turn-around on federal land at either the National Institutes of Health or the National Naval Medical Center.

"We're a little stymied," Hawthorne said. "We did not ask NIH or the Naval Medical Center, but we know what they would say: absolutely not."

National Naval Medical Center officials said they have not been approached by the county about the plan, and could not speculate about its feasibility. Officials at NIH had no comment.

The county planners panned the bus line project more strongly in their written report, released two days after the forum. Assuming the buses would run along dedicated lanes rather than navigate existing traffic, Jones Bridge Road would have to be widened, cutting into private yards and possibly even demolishing some houses, the planners said. Left turns along the road would become more difficult in many places. And redesigning the road for dedicated bus lanes would violate dictates in the local master plan for the road's use.

Safety concerns would arise unless medians were built between the bus and traffic lanes, but that would require seizing the most land from property owners, they said. North Chevy Chase Elementary School, which is accessible from Jones Bridge Road, and the county would have to build and reroute traffic to a new Manor Road entrance for safety reasons, as well.

"After considering the information available to us at this time, staff's overall recommendation is that, if a busway is desired, it should be on the Georgetown branch right of way, not on Jones Bridge Road," the report says. "This road is not appropriate to accommodate the large volumes of buses that would be needed to meet the demands for a high-quality transit connection between the two sides of the Metrorail Red Line."

"They've turned up about two or three more show-stopper problems we didn't even know about," said Ben Ross of Bethesda, president of the Action Committee for Transit. "It makes no sense at all. If the project was based on common sense, we'd already be building the Inner Purple Line."

But Pam Browning of Chevy Chase, who organized a petition drive last summer to save the Georgetown Branch trail from the impacts of the Inner Purple Line, criticized the planners for doing a "quick and dirty" analysis that torpedoed the proposal prematurely.

"This county review process is a sham," she said. "The County Council simply doesn't want to seek any alternatives to the light rail, so it asks the Planning Board to do 'quick and dirty,' one-sided studies, and uses them as an excuse to kill any alternatives to the light rail. ... This has never been a fair, objective process."

Eric Peek, president of Coquelin Run Citizens Association in Chevy Chase, was likewise concerned about the process. "We need to make sure they do the job and complete the studies, rather than just railroad us into one plan."

Based on a prior proposal from state Del. John A. Hurson (D-18) of Chevy Chase, Flanagan's busway plan was conceived bearing in mind the interests of the users of the Georgetown Branch trail and Columbia Country Club. Whereas the Inner Purple Line would run closely along the scenic trail, and cut across country club land, the busway would avoid much of the trail and all of the country club.

But at the forum, the busway plan appeared to generate little enthusiasm in either pro- or anti-Purple Line camps.

Deborah Vollmer of Chevy Chase, who opposes building light rail along the trail, said simply running more buses along East-West Highway would make more sense than building the Jones Bridge busway. She could even "live with" the Inner Purple Line, she said, if it were built underground in deep tunnels so as not to disturb the trail.

"Any transit solution is going to create a problem for some neighbors," she said. "I still think an underground Metro link would be a good, long-range plan."

John Warnock of Chevy Chase, president of the pro-trail Greater Bethesda Chevy Chase Coalition, criticized the busway design for neglecting to serve the needs of working-class people, a key argument for building an east-west transit project. "You should take it where people need to go," he said. "That's downtown Bethesda, or out to Montgomery Mall.

"The Purple Line is turning into a contest of wills between politicians," Warnock added. "To hell with the riding public."

The county Planning Board will hold a hearing on the report at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at its headquarters, 8787 Georgia Ave., Silver Spring. Call 301-495-4600.