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My name is Lindsay Hoffman
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And I live in the Randolph Hills neighborhood
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Outside of White Flint
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I live with my family. I have two little boys.
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Getting around Montgomery County we don't have
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Many choices beyond using our car
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It can take me 10 minutes or it can take me half an hour
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That's usually the range is somewhere in there
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I live near White Oak and it often take me
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40 minutes to drive to downtown Silver Spring during rush hour
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I go from White Oak to Rockville every day
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And it turned out to be a 2 hour - no - 2 hour and a half
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Commute one way if the buses were on time
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Which makes it tough when you're trying to
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Rush home to get to relieve the babysitter
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Or make it up to the office for a meeting
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That we would have a 21 percent population growth by 2040
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With a 39 percent growth in employment
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But 70 percent growth in congestion
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Well for the last 50 years we've planned for more and more cars
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And more and more sprawling development going out in every direction
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And we reached a dead end with that - So the challenge
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Now and the exciting thing is to figure out
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How we can plan for the future
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People describe it as you know like a train without the tracks
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Its a way to provide fast reliable bus service
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Using dedicated lanes and fare machines
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Outside of the bus so you can pay before you get on
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The stops are often farther apart - half a mile or a mile apart
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So the bus doesn't have to stop as often
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And all of these things ensure a faster more reliable ride for everybody
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Existing local bus service is hung up in traffic
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With the same lanes and slow speeds
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Bus rapid transit is intended to have a much faster
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More reliable service that's not hung up in congestion
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And the system that's proposed for Montgomery County
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Is a 79-mile 10-route network
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It goes all over the county. It's clean.
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It serves all of the county's major employment centers
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It serves residential neighborhoods
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It serves places where we go to hang out and
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Eat and spend time with our friends and family
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Really its a way that we can bring the county
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Everyone in the county closer together
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One of the advantages of this what we call level boarding
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So that there are no step to board
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This should be a great boon for older adults
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And for people with disabilities who live close to this area
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To these areas where the lines are going to be
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To be able to have access to other places and parts of the county
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When I saw the proposed BRT transit system
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I was really excited
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Because it went through the major routes
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That I took to get to Montgomery College
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I didn't have parents that could buy me a car
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Or I just didn't have any other options than
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I had to take the bus
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It's expensive to run a car and pay for gas pay for maintenance
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The money could go to other things like food
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Or having fun with my friends and family
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But instead I spend it on my car
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Transportation is a huge part of the contribution to greenhouse gases
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But also can be a huge part of solving the problem of climate change
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When you have 40 or 50 people in a rapid transit vehicle
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Their carbon emissions per person are much lower
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Than if you had 40 or 50 people driving 40 or 50 cars
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I think that Rapid Transit is our best option
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It's flexible, it's the least expensive of the options
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And it can provide frequent reliable service
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It'd be nice to have that extra option for getting around
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To not have to buckle the kids up in their carseats
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And go to one shopping center
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Then buckle them up in their carseats
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And take them to another shopping center
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It'd be nice to be able to hop on a Rapid Transit vehicle
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It's going to be easier and cheaper
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Than widening all the roads
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Building more highways
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You know I honestly think that this system
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Is going to be a win-win for everybody in Montgomery County
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Provided that we have the will to do it