The state’s official milestone chart still says “End of 2027.” Two pages later in the same document, MTA discloses a schedule now running 78 days behind — and tells the legislature, on the record, that no material change occurred.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
Crews began live-wire testing on the Purple Line this week, running light-rail vehicles under full electrical power for the first time along the Adelphi Road–14th Avenue segment. MTA and Purple Line Transit Partners (PLTP) framed it as routine progress. Social posts describing the milestone went further, with one widely shared account declaring “next stop: opening day.”
That framing sits awkwardly next to the state’s own paperwork. MDBayNews obtained the actual bimonthly construction status report MTA filed with the General Assembly in May 2026 — the document Delegate Marc Korman (D-Montgomery) flagged in his June newsletter as containing a discrepancy MDBayNews first reported on June 4. The filing itself is worth reading closely, because it contradicts itself.
The contradiction isn’t between two reports—it’s inside the same filing.
A delay that’s growing, not closing
The contractual deadline for Revenue Service Availability is December 30, 2027. But in March 2026, PLTP submitted its February 2026 schedule update to MTA — and that update, quoted directly in MTA’s own filing, “projects an overall delay of 78 days, showing Revenue Service Availability beginning on March 17, 2028, instead of the contractual date of December 30, 2027.” The prior update had shown a 58-day delay. MTA attributed the added slippage to “snowcrete” — a term for winter weather effects on concrete work — and says it’s exploring alternative testing sequences to recover time.
Here’s the part that deserves more attention than it’s gotten: the same filing is required to answer a specific oversight question, verbatim, each reporting period — “an explanation of any material change to the total construction cost estimate or construction schedule.” MTA’s answer this time: “No material change to the construction cost estimate or construction schedule occurred this period.” That sentence sits a few pages below the 78-day disclosure, in the same document. The public-facing milestone table, also in that filing, still lists Revenue Service Availability as “End of 2027” — language that predates the 78-day figure.
The state’s answer says there was no material schedule change. Two pages earlier, it discloses a 78-day delay.
Korman put it plainly in his own newsletter: “The project milestone chart has not changed, but I think this is misleading.” He’s right, and the filing makes his case for him better than his own summary of it did — the “no material change” line is the state answering its own question incorrectly in writing, not just an outdated chart.
Live-wire testing beginning this month is consistent with a project still working from that internally-projected schedule — not evidence the March 2028 slippage has been closed. Whether MTA’s next bimonthly filing, due in roughly two months, updates the milestone table or the “material change” answer to match PLTP’s own numbers is the open question this week’s testing news doesn’t resolve.
Live-wire testing is genuine progress. It is not evidence the March 2028 schedule has disappeared.
How it got here
- 2016: Original P3 agreement signed at $5.6 billion, opening targeted for March 2022.
- 2020: The original design-build contractor walked off the job partway through construction, having already spent roughly $1.1 billion of a $2 billion construction budget. The state paid a $250 million settlement to end the relationship.
- 2022: New contractor team (Dragados USA and OHLA, operating as Maryland Transit Solutions) signed on; total project cost analysts now put in the $9–10 billion range once financing and operations are included. Opening was rescheduled to fall 2026.
- 2023: Opening slipped to winter 2027; MTA agreed to pay PLTP an additional $148 million tied to the extension.
- As of March 31, 2026 (per the May 2026 filing): Overall project 89.7% complete, up from 88.8% on January 31. Rail installation had jumped to 97.9% (from 87.0%), with all track expected to be complete by the end of May. MTA’s “Startup” category — its metric for testing and commissioning progress, distinct from physical construction — stood at just 21.9%, up from 16.9% two months earlier. Since the 2022 contract took effect, $2.288 billion had been spent on the design-build contract through that date.
- May 7, 2026: Gov. Wes Moore joined officials in Silver Spring to mark the final rail segment laid, part of the administration’s “Delivering for Maryland” tour — an event the May filing notes occurred just after its own March 31 reporting cutoff.
- Per that same May 2026 filing: PLTP’s schedule update projects 78 days past the contractual deadline — March 2028 — while MTA’s formal “material change” answer says none occurred, and the public milestone table still reads “End of 2027.”
Context: the $3 million question
In March, MDBayNews covered Gov. Moore’s proposed $3 million business-revitalization grant program for corridor businesses in the FY 2027 budget — a modest sum against nearly a decade of construction disruption in Silver Spring, Langley Park, and College Park, some of which has closed storefronts permanently.
Why this week’s news deserves scrutiny, not celebration
Live-wire testing is a genuine and necessary construction milestone — the “Startup” metric, still only around a fifth complete as of March 31, is exactly what testing like this feeds into. It is not evidence that the project’s most recently disclosed delay has been resolved. MTA’s own filing shows physical construction racing toward completion while its written answer to the legislature’s oversight question says nothing about the schedule has materially changed — in the same document where PLTP’s own numbers say otherwise. Readers celebrating “next stop: opening day” based on this week’s testing news are working from the chart that hasn’t caught up, not the schedule that has.
Readers celebrating ‘next stop: opening day’ are working from the chart that hasn’t caught up, not the schedule that has.
MDBayNews will be watching the next bimonthly filing for whether the milestone table and the “material change” answer are updated to match PLTP’s own numbers.
Sources: Maryland Department of Transportation/Maryland Transit Administration, “Purple Line Construction Status” bimonthly report to the 2025 Joint Chairmen’s Report, Senate Budget and Taxation Committee and House Appropriations Committee, filed May 2026, covering data through March 31, 2026 (dlslibrary.state.md.us/publications/JCR/2025/2025_118-119_2026(5).pdf); Del. Marc Korman (D-Montgomery), “June Update” newsletter, June 15, 2026 (marckorman.com); MDBayNews reporting, “Purple Line Delay Grows to 78 Days as MTA Milestone Chart Stays Frozen” (June 4, 2026) and “Moore Touts $3 Million for Purple Line ‘Revitalization’ — After Years of Delays and Billions in Costs” (March 10, 2026); Purple Line NOW; Railway Age; Mass Transit Magazine.
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