For years, the Purple Line was a debate about trains. Activists and politicians argued over -- and over -- what type of rail the intercounty transit project should use and which route it should follow. Then Del. John Adams Hurson (D-Dist 18) of Chevy Chase mentioned Jones Bridge Road to the right people, and a busway was quietly born.

The genesis of Hurson's idea came in 2000 as a simple rerouting of the Purple Line train along Jones Bridge and other existing roads in Chevy Chase. The goal: to keep the project off the Capital Crescent Trail and out of the Chevy Chase neighborhoods it would pass through.

At first, no one seemed to be listening. State transportation officials panned the idea as too costly, and in 2000 Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D) backed the very light-rail route Hurson was fighting.

Hurson, however, stuck with his Jones Bridge idea -- persistence that appears to have paid off.

In the past six months, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) has resurrected the plan as a Purple Line alternative using buses instead of trains, and whittled the railway options down to none. Whether by design or default, the Jones Bridge busway is now emerging as the only surviving Purple Line option, sending it and Hurson, its architect, to the front of the line.

Spurned and surprised, some county lawmakers want to know how he got there. Others are wondering if he cut a deal with the Ehrlich administration.

How it happened

The initial shock hit in March when state Transportation Secretary Robert L. Flanagan announced that, at Hurson's urging, the state would study building a rapid-transit busway along Jones Bridge Road in place of building the Inner Purple light-rail line between downtown Silver Spring and Bethesda. The Purple Line is envisioned as connecting Bethesda, Silver Spring, College Park and New Carrollton.

Hurson's proposal itself was old news. Reports about it began appearing in The Gazette and The Washington Post in 2000, and Hurson's opposition to the light rail was on record long before.

"John has always been maneuvering to stop the Georgetown trolley, not just recently," said state Sen. Ida G. Ruben (D-Dist. 20) of Silver Spring, adding that she has been battling Hurson over the project for 17 years.

But county leaders say they were taken aback by the state's sudden interest in Hurson's proposal this year, given its relative lack of local support.

Del. Sheila Ellis Hixson (D-Dist. 20) of Silver Spring, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, said she complained to Flanagan after his March announcement and asked why he had made that decision. She said she has never received a satisfactory answer.

"He said they spoke to one delegate about it, so they thought they had to look at Jones Bridge," she said. "I said, 'So the last person you speak to is who you go with?' Because we'd like to know how it works."

Hixson was one of several legislators from Montgomery County who had met with Flanagan and other members of the administration in the weeks before the busway announcement to urge that the state back the Inner Purple Line. At no point, the legislators said, had Flanagan or anyone else brought up anything about a busway on Jones Bridge Road.

"I felt very encouraged by their response," said Del. Henry B. Heller (D-Dist. 19) of Rockville. "I felt very encouraged by what they were saying, that they had heard us."

The busway announcement, he said, "came out of the blue a few weeks later."

Motives questioned

Not everyone is so sure. Montgomery County Councilmen Thomas E. Perez and George L. Leventhal, who were also in the meeting with Flanagan, have questioned the timing of the governor's interest in Hurson's proposal and Hurson's newfound interest in the governor's campaign to legalize slot machines.

On record as a foe of legalizing slots, Hurson made headlines in June when he sent a letter to House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Dist. 30) of Annapolis outlining a plan to legalize slots at Maryland racetracks.

"The reality is that if slots are going to pass, it should be during the 2004 session," Hurson wrote. "This timing provides both policy and political benefits, as it would allow adequate time for the revenues to develop, and enable Members of the General Assembly to ... explain our votes to our constituents before the 2006 elections."

Ten days later, racetrack owner William Rickman Sr. held a fund-raiser for Hurson at his mansion in Potomac.

"It would appear that changing his position on slot machines was a very good deal for [Hurson], both in terms of this unpopular Jones Bridge Road busway proposal, and in terms of the fund-raiser the Rickmans held for him," said Leventhal (D-At large) of Takoma Park. "It certainly has paid off well for him."

"I have no idea why Mr. Leventhal would say that," Hurson said. "I proposed the Jones Bridge alignment in February of 2000 ... I'm happy the administration is taking a look at it. But it has nothing to do with my suggestion, after being requested by the House leadership for my ideas, on the slots proposal."

In March, Hurson acknowledged that, before the transportation secretary's announcement about studying the Jones Bridge busway, Ehrlich's chief of staff asked Hurson to support legalizing slots.

At the time, Hurson told The Gazette there was "no quid pro quo," and that the Ehrlich administration's attempt at wooing him on slots had failed.

Steven L. Kreseski, Ehrlich's chief of staff, remembers the conversation differently.

"We got the sense that he was open to looking at a reasonable slots proposal," Kreseski said. "We found him very open-minded in the direction the governor wanted to go on revenues and cuts. He didn't close the door."

Kreseski said he did not interpret the conversation as a quid pro quo.

Del. Peter V.R. Franchot (D-Dist. 20) of Takoma Park has criticized Hurson's stands on the two issues, and the appearance of a connection between them.

"This is a double whammy," Franchot said, "because the Purple Line is a high priority to relieve congestion and help the environment, and slots should be a low priority because it is a hidden tax on the poor, breeds addiction and wreaks havoc on small business. Del. Hurson has managed to combine the two issues."

Perez (D-Dist. 5) of Takoma Park accused Flanagan of "dusting off old proposals that were in the scrap heap" as a convenient way of stalling the Purple Line to death. While "not privy" to the communications between Hurson and the administration, Perez said he is concerned about a possible exchange of priorities.

"It does raise some basic issues when we have such a person flip-flop on the slots issue, and then we have the administration shortly thereafter tanking the Purple Line," he said. "Only John Hurson knows exactly what went on there."

No connection

Hurson called the implications of a quid pro quo "ridiculous" and denied having flipped his position on slots at all.

He said he sent his five-page June letter to Busch, directly in response to the speaker's request for ideas on how to approach the state's fiscal crisis. The letter included a number of recommendations besides slots and a long discussion on health care issues. Hurson is chairman of the House Health and Government Operations Committee.

"My position on the record is that I am opposed to slots," Hurson said. "I voted against them. But I also think that, given the fiscal condition of the state, you have to keep your mind open to all possibilities. This is one type of revenue enhancement. ... In a perfect policy world, I would favor just tax increases. But I don't think that's going to happen in a four-year term. I think you have to look at the options."

Hurson said his slots plan largely mirrors an existing Senate proposal. The Senate scrapped Ehrlich's slots plan last year and wrote its own, calling for slots at four locations with 39 percent of the profits going to the tracks. Slots supporters expected the plan to generate more than $700 million per year for education.

Hurson said he would not support slots legislation if it were not accompanied by some kind of tax hike, a position he insisted he has always held.

Busch said Hurson's letter did not surprise him because Hurson had extensive knowledge of the slots issue from his years as House majority leader to then Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr., a leading slots proponent.

Busch dismissed any connection with Hurson's slots stance to the Ehrlich administration's handling of the Purple Line.

"His position on slots doesn't have any connection on where to put a transportation line," the speaker said. "I can't see how you can connect those dots."

Ehrlich, meanwhile, vehemently denied any notion of a quid pro quo. "That's absolutely ridiculous," he said. "That's not how this administration works."

No county support

Flanagan said no one should be surprised at Ehrlich's interest in viable alternatives to the trolley line because during his campaign, the governor pledged to "show deference" to the Capital Crescent Trail. Many trail advocates oppose the light rail because it would line the interim Georgetown Branch of the Capital Crescent Trail and require removing mature trees.

"The fact of the matter is that Del. Hurson came to us with a proposal to look at the Jones Bridge Road alternative," Flanagan said. "It had merit, and it responded to the governor's campaign promise to protect the Capital Crescent Trail."

But Flanagan's interest in the busway even conflicts with the agenda of his pro-trail friend on the Montgomery County Council, fellow Republican Howard Denis of Chevy Chase, who opposes the light-rail plan.

Denis and a group of county residents also met with Flanagan before the busway announcement to advise him against supporting the light rail. Flanagan did bring up the busway plan at that meeting, Denis said, but the councilman warned him it was a bad idea.

"I told him I didn't think it made any sense," Denis said. "I'd heard John Hurson talk about it. But it didn't seem to make any sense to me. I tried to make the point that what we need is a Metro line."

But the beyond-the-Beltway Metrorail line that Denis and County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) support has failed to win state support under either Glendening or Ehrlich. The Outer Line is not part of the state Purple Line study, nor is Duncan's compromise Purple Loop, which would have routed a rail line along the Capital Beltway.

Duncan continues to support a Purple Line of some kind, but is withholding comment for now on the busway idea, said David Weaver, a Duncan spokesman.

Flanagan has couched his defense of the Jones Bridge busway study this year in terms of its benefits to the trail.

But just this week, Ehrlich himself made it clear where he stood.

"It will not go through the country club," Ehrlich said in an interview last week, referring to the route the Inner Purple Line would take through Columbia Country Club.

The statement is a potent one, transit activists said, because it effectively voids the Inner Purple Line as long as Ehrlich remains governor.

The light rail is designed to follow an old railroad right of way that Montgomery County bought from CSX in 1985 for $10 million. The right of way cuts right through Columbia Country Club's golf course.

Members of the politically influential club have fought the light-rail line for more than a decade, funding an extensive lobbying campaign and contributing to the campaigns of its allies. As part of that effort, the club helped bankroll SMARTPAC -- short for Smart Alternatives For Rail Transport -- a political action committee dedicated to the defeat of the Inner Purple Line.

Hurson helped launch the PAC and was its first contributor, according to a 1990 campaign finance statement.

Despite the governor's declaration to protect the club, Flanagan said the state will complete its study of the Inner Purple Line, which so far has cost the state $9 million. State and federal officials are expected to choose in 2006 which transit plan to implement.

"We feel very confident the [Jones Bridge busway] alternative is going to be very strongly competitive," Flanagan said.

The transportation secretary blamed the lack of community support for the busway on county planners' pessimistic analysis of it. The planners presented their study at a Planning Board hearing in June.

"There were people there who were supporting alternatives," Flanagan said. "They didn't support the alternative as expressed by Parks and Planning, necessarily. But that's because Parks and Planning hypothesized a project we would never consider."

Some residents interested in finding an alternative to the Inner Purple Line leveled similar criticism at the planners during the hearing.

"The political nature of the Planning Board study is not lost on the residents of East Bethesda," said Andy O'Hare, vice president of the East Bethesda Citizens Association. "EBCA will request that the state press ahead to consider a wide array of transit alternatives ... even if, as expected, the County Council votes to reject alternatives that would bypass the Georgetown Branch [trail]."

The County Council, which has endorsed building the Inner Purple Line repeatedly, requested that the planning staff study the Jones Bridge busway last spring after Flanagan announced the state was considering it. In July, the council rejected the busway proposal unanimously.

Leventhal said it would be sad if the Ehrlich administration chooses to build the busway when it has no known champions in the county, other than Hurson.

"As far as I know," Leventhal said, "he's the only human being in the world who wants a busway on Jones Bridge Road."

-- Staff Writers Steven T. Dennis and Thomas Dennison contributed to this report.