And I live in the Randolph Hills neighborhood

Outside of White Flint

I live with my family. I have two little boys.

Getting around Montgomery County we don't have

Many choices beyond using our car

It can take me 10 minutes or it can take me half an hour

That's usually the range is somewhere in there

I live near White Oak and it often take me

40 minutes to drive to downtown Silver Spring during rush hour

I go from White Oak to Rockville every day

And it turned out to be a 2 hour - no - 2 hour and a half

Commute one way if the buses were on time

Which makes it tough when you're trying to

Rush home to get to relieve the babysitter

Or make it up to the office for a meeting

That we would have a 21 percent population growth by 2040

With a 39 percent growth in employment

But 70 percent growth in congestion

Well for the last 50 years we've planned for more and more cars

And more and more sprawling development going out in every direction

And we reached a dead end with that - So the challenge

Now and the exciting thing is to figure out

How we can plan for the future

People describe it as you know like a train without the tracks

Its a way to provide fast reliable bus service

Using dedicated lanes and fare machines

Outside of the bus so you can pay before you get on

The stops are often farther apart - half a mile or a mile apart

So the bus doesn't have to stop as often

And all of these things ensure a faster more reliable ride for everybody

Existing local bus service is hung up in traffic

With the same lanes and slow speeds

Bus rapid transit is intended to have a much faster

More reliable service that's not hung up in congestion

And the system that's proposed for Montgomery County

Is a 79-mile 10-route network

It goes all over the county. It's clean.

It serves all of the county's major employment centers

It serves residential neighborhoods

It serves places where we go to hang out and

Eat and spend time with our friends and family

Really its a way that we can bring the county

Everyone in the county closer together

One of the advantages of this what we call level boarding

So that there are no step to board

This should be a great boon for older adults

And for people with disabilities who live close to this area

To these areas where the lines are going to be

To be able to have access to other places and parts of the county

When I saw the proposed BRT transit system

I was really excited

Because it went through the major routes

That I took to get to Montgomery College

I didn't have parents that could buy me a car

Or I just didn't have any other options than

I had to take the bus

It's expensive to run a car and pay for gas pay for maintenance

The money could go to other things like food

Or having fun with my friends and family

But instead I spend it on my car

Transportation is a huge part of the contribution to greenhouse gases

But also can be a huge part of solving the problem of climate change

When you have 40 or 50 people in a rapid transit vehicle

Their carbon emissions per person are much lower

Than if you had 40 or 50 people driving 40 or 50 cars

I think that Rapid Transit is our best option

It's flexible, it's the least expensive of the options

And it can provide frequent reliable service

It'd be nice to have that extra option for getting around

To not have to buckle the kids up in their carseats

And go to one shopping center

Then buckle them up in their carseats

And take them to another shopping center

It'd be nice to be able to hop on a Rapid Transit vehicle

It's going to be easier and cheaper

Than widening all the roads

Building more highways

You know I honestly think that this system

Is going to be a win-win for everybody in Montgomery County

Provided that we have the will to do it