Council Adds Second Day For Bus Rapid Transit Public Hearing

People packed the Montgomery County Planning Board meeting room before a public hearing on Bus Rapid Transit in MayThe Montgomery County Council has added a second day of testimony to the September public hearing on a bus rapid transit system.

The pair of hearings will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 24 and at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 26 at the Council Office Building in Rockville.

The additional day of testimony is no surprise. There’s been much debate already over the idea of repurposing existing traffic lanes for exclusive bus use. Rockville Pike/Wisconsin Avenue is one of the 10 corridors in the proposed 79-mile system.

It is part of the Countywide Transit Corridors Functional Master Plan, which the Planning Board sent to the Council in July.

There is much left to hash out. Some residents in Chevy Chase and Silver Spring have specific concerns about a bus rapid transit corridor coming through their neighborhoods. Some say traffic in regular traffic lanes would only grow more congested if the county took away a lane.

Even bus rapid transit supporters have varying views on the plan as presented by the Planning Board.

Some transit activists think the Board watered it down too much by requiring the county’s Department of Transportation to conduct its own traffic studies at the implementation stage.

So get ready for two full evenings of testimony in late September.

If you’d like to testify, sign up by calling the County Council’s office at 240-777-7803.

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