The Maryland Transit Administration has ruled out rerouting the Corridor Cities Transitway around King Farm using Interstate 370 and Shady Grove Road, the state agency told the City of Rockville earlier this month.

In January, after King Farm residents asked the City Council to intervene, the council drafted a letter to MTA asking the state to study alternate routes that would not include transit stations in the north Rockville neighborhood.

“MTA studied 17 variations of alignments down Shady Grove Road and I-370,” Craig Simoneau, director of the city’s Department of Public Works, wrote in a May 5 email to city manager Scott Ullery. “Their analysis reveals that they will not be recommending any of these 17 because of higher cost; reduced ridership; increased travel time; and/or lower travel time reliability.”

Some of the options would be out of step with Federal Transit Administration requirements, Simoneau wrote. Late last week, city staff was preparing a letter to the City Council summarizing MTA’s conclusions.

MTA officials plan to meet with King Farm neighborhood group leaders “to explain the conclusions and the next steps for getting community input to the issues/concerns with the King Farm alignment,” Simoneau wrote.

After meeting with city staff earlier this year, the state agreed to consider the alternate alignments that would take the transit line around King Farm. In an April 12 letter to the City Council, state transportation Secretary Beverley Swaim-Staley wrote that the state would consider an option to bring the transit line down King Farm Boulevard, “using the existing roadway as is or adding an additional travel lane in each direction along the median and adjacent to the existing travel lane.”

Either of those options are still in play, Simoneau wrote in the May 5 email.

“If the MTA concludes that a King Farm Boulevard option is the most reasonable and effective for the project, we will seek input and cooperation from the residents to integrate the CCT into the community to the greatest extent possible,” Swaim-Staley wrote.

State transit planners have ruled out alignments along Piccard Drive, Redland Road and Gude Drive, she wrote.

Rockville has refrained from stating a preference between light rail or bus rapid transit and has offered to work with MTA on details to mitigate any impact on King Farm.

The City of Gaithersburg is advocating for the light rail version of the transit line.

The proposed 14-mile transit line between the Shady Grove Metro station and the COMSAT site near Clarksburg was a cornerstone of plans for the new urban, transit-oriented, pedestrian-friendly King Farm development that began to take root in north Rockville at the end of the last century.