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The Montgomery County Council's top traffic expert says that the proposed 900-acre live-work research hub between Gaithersburg and Rockville will be able to hold 20 million square feet of laboratory, office and retail space without breaching county thresholds for traffic congestion.

The analysis, explained Monday to the council's Planning, Housing and Economic Development committee, comes as a boon for boosters of the full-development scenario of the Gaithersburg West Master Plan, a 40-year vision that would triple homes, jobs and commercial space in the Shady Grove Life Sciences Center, turning the county's preeminent biotech node into a world-class research village.

But while Gaithersburg West has spurred high hopes from scientific and business leaders, it has sparked criticism from civic activists, transit advocates and environmentalists who say that the so-called "Science City" will clog roadways and overwhelm its suburban environs.

Ahead of the County Council's decision on Gaithersburg West expected in late spring, the council's top planning expert agreed with the assumptions for traffic and mass transit upon which the County Planning Board based its draft of Gaithersburg West in July. Glen Orlin told PHED committee members Monday that the 20 million-square-foot scenario could be reached without exceeding the county's standards for tolerable congestion — though he also told the council that "You can go with less if you want and it'll work."

He also deemed "reasonable" the draft's prediction that 30 percent of all trips to or through the Life Sciences Center will be made by someone other than a single automobile driver, and said that raising the threshold for congestion by more than 10 percent is appropriate, but only after the proposed Corridor Cities Transitway is included in a future county growth plan.

Even then, he wrote, "A plan in balance does not mean that traffic conditions at build-out will be deemed ‘good' or even ‘fair'; more likely the traffic congestion will be at the borderline between ‘tolerable' and ‘intolerable,'" he wrote.

Orlin's analysis stemmed from a series of questions from Gaithersburg and Rockville city leaders, sent to the council in the last two weeks — after being posed to the Planning Board last fall.

While both cities welcome the benefits of having a bolstered Life Sciences Center — projected to generate $1.5 billion net revenue over the next 40 years — on their borders, unsettled concerns persist, in Gaithersburg over highway interchanges that many worry would isolate neighborhoods and displace homes and in Rockville over arterial roads that city leaders believe have not been adequately accounted for in the Planning Board's analyses.

County planners have determined that the interchange proposed for Great Seneca Highway and Key West Avenue — one of six grade-separated interchanges proposed in Gaithersburg West — will not be needed. And recent designs for Great Seneca's remaining interchanges show that traffic should flow "unimpeded through both intersections, as would traffic flow on Sam Eig Highway to and from I-270 and I-370, and by extension to the Intercounty Connector," Orlin wrote.

But Gaithersburg leaders also believe that the three Great Seneca interchanges could infringe on the CCT alignment and require that dozens of homes and businesses be razed. In Rockville, city leaders have pressed for more information on what Science City will do to roads inside the city's borders, especially Darnestown Road, Key West Avenue/West Montgomery Avenue and the ramps to Interstate 270.

"Rockville encourages the County Council not to fear understanding the reality, even if it leads to a conclusion that densities in the plan must be reduced," Mayor Phyllis Marcuccio wrote in Rockville's Jan. 13 letter to the council.

The PHED committee invited the mayors to meet with them in the coming weeks.

The Planning Board's responses did not dissuade County Councilman Philip M. Andrews from his stance as one of Gaithersburg West's most outspoken skeptics.

"The plan relies on blatant, unfair assertions that are not grounded in experience," he said Monday, pointing to the expectation that 15 percent of trips in the Life Sciences Center will be made by transit, 10 percent via carpool and 5 percent either walking or biking.

Andrews (D-Dist. 3) of Gaithersburg deemed the responses "a brush-off" and blasted the logic that the plan "is in balance because we've redefined what's acceptable." He also took issue with the balance being based on average traffic levels across the planning area as a whole, regardless of problems with specific intersections.

"To say that the average level of traffic in the Rockville area would still be OK is analogous to a patient going to a doctor for a exam, and despite having severely clogged arteries to the heart, the overall circulation is OK — the average OK — and so the doctor says, ‘Well your average is reasonable,'" he said. "But not paying attention to what the severe problem may be locally, that could greatly undermine the success of the continued vitality of a community like Rockville."

He again asked the Planning Board to answer the cities' questions directly.

The North Potomac Citizens Association is hosting a town hall forum on the Gaithersburg West master plan from 7-9 p.m. Monday at Quince Orchard High School, 15800 Quince Orchard Road in Gaithersburg. The County Council's four at-large members — Marc Elrich, council president Nancy M. Floreen, George Leventhal and Duchy Trachtenberg — are expected to speak. The North Potomac Community Recreation

Center will also be discussed.