ACT Sends Questionnaire to Planning Board Chair Candidates

Following are the questions Action Committee for Transit (ACT) has for Planning Board Chair candidates. ACT is asking for responses by May 4. The County Council will pick the new Chair next month.

ACT Questionnaire for Candidates for Planning Board Chair

1) Do you support the Locally Preferred Alternative selected by Gov. O'Malley for the Purple Line, including an at-grade light rail line with a trail alongside it on the Georgetown Branch right of way between Bethesda and Silver Spring?

2) Would you support further study of alternatives to the Locally Preferred Alternative, such as heavy rail or single-tracking, which might delay the building of the Purple Line?

3) Do you support the current growth policy which ties development to the movement of motor vehicles, or would you replace the "PAMR" and "LATR" tests with a growth policy that gives transit, pedestrian, and bicycle travel equal weight with automobiles?

4) Are minimum parking requirements, which make transit riders, pedestrians, and bicyclists pay for parking they don't use and thereby subsidize drivers, wise policy in places with good transit service?

5) The Parks Department's current policy is to clear snow only from roadways used by motor vehicles and not from roadways used exclusively by bicycles and pedestrians, even when the roadway used by bicycles and pedestrians carries far more people. Will you reverse this policy?

6) Will you end the Planning Department's use of biased language that treats only automobile travel as the norm, such as referring to an intersection widening that worsens pedestrian travel conditions as an "improvement" and describing non-automobile travel as "alternative" transportation?

Responses were requested by May 4 and will be posted here after that date.