Silver Spring Transit Center: now what?

Let’s review the facts. 

The Silver Spring Transit Center is a lemon.

• We know from Montgomery County’s April 15, 2014 IG report that, as early as 2010, serious design and construction flaws were systematically ignored (e.g. cracks in newly poured slabs in Oct. 2010 and curing concrete exposed to freezing temperatures in Dec. 2010)
• We know from KCE’s March 15, 2013 report that there are other serious flaws—complete lack of expansion joints, slabs thinner than they’re supposed to be, exposed reinforcement, missing reinforcement, understrength and overstressed concrete, suspect concrete test reports, under-designed beams, etc.
• We know that the KCE report attributes the SSTC’s serious design, construction and inspection and testing flaws to errors and omissions by the SSTC’s builder (Foulger Pratt), engineer (Parsons Brinkerhoff) and concrete inspector/tester and special quality inspector (Balter Co.)
• We know from the April 21, 2014 Augustine report that 3-inch thick pieces of concrete have fallen from the SSTC
• We know from WMATA that because of its serious flaws that the SSTC will be expensive to operate and maintain
• We know that funding for the SSTC is 53% federal funds, 11% Maryland state funds and 36% Montgomery County funds
• We know that the SSTC’s cost has ballooned to $120+ million, and that doesn’t include millions in current “repairs”, or future operations, maintenance and repair costs, or future admisistrative and lawsuits' costs
• We know that Montgomery County, without holding public meetings to give the public the opportunity to ask their questions and to make their comments on the public record, is proceeding with “repairs” to the seriously flawed SSTC

We, the public, paid more than retail for a brand new transit center and we got a seriously flawed lemon instead. We deserve better.

Now what? 

We should do what we do with any other lemon where we paid for new and got seriously flawed instead. We should demand that our money be refunded.