May 8, 2014
Mr. Isaiah Leggett, County Executive
Montgomery County Council
Re: Silver Spring Transit Center
Dear Mr. Leggett and members of the Montgomery County Council,
The public doesn’t want your apology for the severely flawed Silver Spring Transit Center; the public simply doesn’t want the severely flawed, lemon, SSTC.
To your credit Montgomery County commissioned KCE Structural Engineers to investigate the SSTC’s severe cracking. To your further credit Montgomery County posted KCE’s report on your website more than a year ago.
As you know, KCE attributes the SSTC’s extensive cracking, and other serious design and construction flaws, to errors and omissions by the SSTC’s builder/contractor Foulger-Pratt, its engineer/designer Parsons Brinkerhoff and its concrete tester/inspector and special quality inspector Balter Co. Some of the other serious flaws that are identified in the KCE report include no expansion joints, slabs that are more than an inch thinner than called for, exposed reinforcement, missing reinforcement, understrength and overstressed concrete, suspect concrete test reports, under-designed beams, etc. Since KCE’s report was made public in March 2013, other flaws have been discovered, including, most recently, a 3-inch thick piece of concrete that fell from the SSTC that is attributed to voids in the concrete.
As is apparent from your own and WMATA’s reports, at the very least, the SSTC is a lemon that will be expensive to operate and maintain because of its numerous design and construction flaws. At worst the SSTC is a public safety hazard. Neither scenario is acceptable for a project that is funded by federal (53%), state (11%) and county (36%) public funds.
While your actions in commissioning the KCE report and making it public are to be applauded, your public statements regarding the SSTC and your failure to obtain public input, where citizens can ask their questions and make their comments on the public record, before Montgomery County proceeded with expensive repairs, are troubling. We strongly urge you to reconsider further repairs to the lemon SSTC, which will not negate the SSTC’s serious design and construction flaws, high operation and maintenance costs or public safety concerns.
Respectfully,
Ray Koenig
Citizen
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