Prince George’s leaders say the Purple Line will be the key to the county contributing its fair share to the region’s ambitious housing goals.

The 16-mile light rail line linking Bethesda and New Carrollton is years away from opening – officials currently estimate the first passengers boarding between 2022 and 2023 – but lawmakers believe they should start planning to take advantage of it now. Specifically, they hope encourage construction of new homes, particularly affordable ones, along the new east-west transit corridor.

Like the rest of the region’s localities, the Maryland suburb has in principle agreed to massively ramp up housing construction during the next decade to meet a supply shortage. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments has set a goal of building 320,000 new homes by 2030 in a bid to drive rent prices down and prevent thousands of families from being displaced.

But unlike two of its neighbors, Prince George’s has yet to set specific construction…