Montgomery County is outlining $3.3 billion in local transportation priorities as Congress begins a critical period of negotiations on President Joe Biden’s major infrastructure bill.

The Council and Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich sent a letter to Maryland congressional representatives earlier this month with a list of transit, passenger rail, and pedestrian projects officials say are ready to be funded.

“Maryland needs a modern approach to infrastructure investments,” Rep. Anthony Brown (D) said during a Monday news conference. “For Maryland to remain the best place to live, work, and raise a family, we need to lead the country in innovative transportation investments and reject the old thinking that building more roads will solve our transportation problems.”

Among its list of proposed projects, the county wants to build out a Bus Rapid Transit network, a series of high-capacity bus routes that serve riders at least every 15 minutes and have other amenities like larger bus shelters and real-time arrival information. The Flash BRT launched last October in Montgomery County along Colesville Road/Route 29 — now, officials hope to get money to create more dedicated lanes for the service. The funding would create BRT along Veirs Mill Road between the Wheaton Metro Station and Montgomery College-Rockville and between Clarksburg and Bethesda. Officials also want money to study creating transit corridors on New Hampshire Avenue, Randolph Road, University Boulevard, and Georgia Avenue.

The request also would earmark funding for pedestrian and bike safety items, including dedicated bike facilities, better sidewalks, better pedestrian connections to the Purple Line light rail project, and better pedestrian crossings along Veirs Mill Road, a busy stretch of road for which residents have long sought safety improvements.

Among the other proposals: more trips on MARC’s Brunswick commuter line, developing electric charging networks and incentivizing electric or zero-emission vehicles, prioritizing transit funding, and investing in road safety projects.

The letter also included several priorities for housing, education, the environment and more.

“Many of us have been working for and waiting for help from the federal government for years,” Council President Tom Hucker said during Monday’s news conference. “And so they’re really right on time and exactly what we want to hear.”

It’s unclear how much of the proposed $2 trillion American Jobs Plan infrastructure bill will go toward specific transportation projects, but earmarks for local projects are back in time for the infrastructure plan. Congress had prohibited the practice of dedicating funding for specific projects for more than a decade. 

The letter outlining the multi-billion-dollar proposal comes just days after Brown rallied against the proposed expansion and toll lane plan for I-495 and I-270. Brown wrote U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg asking the feds to review the project, a move that the Governor’s office and Suburban Maryland Transportation Alliance derided, according to Maryland Matters.

“The project does not meet our region’s transportation needs,” Brown said. “It lacks transit alternatives and investments and it’s an outdated approach that’s in conflict with the by the administration’s priorities of equity and climate.”

Brown said he favors revamping the congestion-prone American Legion Bridge between Virginia and Maryland but said any expansion of that bridge would need to come with an investment in transit, preferably rail, over the bridge.