Eight Montgomery county legislators have signed a letter to the County Council questioning an all-transit plan for improving traffic flow in the Interstate 270 corridor. Maryland Politics Watch reports.

To put that in context, there are 32 Montgomery County senators and delegates, so the group organized by Sen. Rob Garagiola makes up one-quarter of the delegation. They also favor light rail as the mode of travel for the proposed Corridor Cities Transitway, which would connect communities in the I-270 corriidor.

MPW does a good job of describing the muddled stance taken bby some Montgomery legislators, some of whom favor the all-transit plan proposed by Action Committee for Transit except when they oppose it.

This would be just another arcane dispute within Montgomery if it weren't for the fact they're wrangling over the fate of a plan to spend $4.6 billion to add two express toll lanes in each direction on I-270 -- a dubious proposition on environmental, fiscal and geographical equity grounds.

The Montgomery delegation is fragmenting over tthe plan largely because some of its members are skeptical of the notion that building ever-wider highways is the solution to traffic congestion problems. There's also a  split between down-county lawmakers, whose constituents would get limited use of the increased road capacity, and up-county legislators whose constituents are stuck  in I-270's legendary backups.