Photo by dan reed! on Flickr.

Over 50 speakers packed the Planning Board auditorium in Silver Spring Thursday night to offer comments on Montgomery County’s proposed Bus Rapid Transit network. Over more than 3 hours, residents debated the merits of the 10-route, 79-mile system county planners envision.

A slight majority of speakers spoke in favor of the plan, saying BRT could give people a real alternative to driving and support projected population and employment growth. Many speakers highlighted the importance of transit in attracting new residents, particularly young adults who already flock to the county’s walkable, transit-accessible neighborhoods.

Skeptics of the plan had concerns about taking away space from cars on Wisconsin Avenue in Chevy Chase and Route 29 in Four Corners to give buses dedicated lanes, arguably BRT’s most important feature. These corridors already have the county’s highest transit ridership and are projected to carry the BRT network’s most-used routes.

The Planning Board will discuss the plan and potentially make changes to it during a series of worksessions over the next several weeks. After that, they’ll vote on whether to approve it. If it passes, the plan will then go to the County Council later this year for additional public hearings and worksessions and a final vote.

Kelly Blynn of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, who live-tweeted the event with myself and Ted Van Houten from the Action Committee for Transit, compiled this summary of the hearing on Storify:

Dan Reed (they/them) is Greater Greater Washington’s regional policy director, focused on housing and land use policy in Maryland and Northern Virginia. For a decade prior, Dan was a transportation planner working with communities all over North America to make their streets safer, enjoyable, and equitable. Their writing has appeared in publications including Washingtonian, CityLab, and Shelterforce, as well as Just Up The Pike, a neighborhood blog founded in 2006. Dan lives in Silver Spring with Drizzy, the goodest boy ever.