Testimony to the Planning Board
Purple Line Functional Plan Draft
December 10, 2009 Public Hearing

The Georgetown Branch Trail in Woodside, at the 16th Street Crossing.
This is our trail without the Purple Line.
My name is Wayne Phyillaier and I live in Woodside, Silver Spring. I am speaking tonight as an individual. I have been working as an active member of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA) and the Coalition for the Capital Crescent Trail (CCCT) for over ten years to have the Capital Crescent Trail finished through my Woodside neighborhood.
Those of us living in the neighborhoods of Woodside, North Woodside, and Rosemary Hills, and also the many families living in the apartments and condominiums in the Silver Spring CBD, are still waiting for the Capital Crescent Trail after all of these years.
By now you have heard many times from opponents of the Purple Line that a trail survey shows there are 10,000 uses of the Georgetown Branch Trail every week, and the Purple Line will interfere with this use. But this takes one traffic count out of context from the survey and ignores major survey findings. In fact, a major finding of the survey is that the Trail is grossly underused east of Bethesda.
M-NCPPC Department of Parks, May 2007, “Capital Crescent Trail / Georgetown Branch Trail Survey Report“, p. 1, “Survey Highlights”: “The survey showed that the paved CCT received twice the use of the gravel Georgetown Branch Trail. The low use of the gravel trail at Grubb Road strongly supports the need to pave this portion of the trail and complete it to downtown Silver Spring.”
The Purple Line Functional Plan is entirely consistent with the trail survey recommendation. It would give the Capital Crescent Trail to ALL neighborhoods between Bethesda and Silver Spring. The trail would be built to a good standard, well separated from transit, with grade separated crossings of all major highways between Silver Spring and Bethesda, and connected to the Metropolitan Branch Trail.
The Functional Plan will give us all a better Trail – AND better transit. Please endorse it!
Wayne Phyillaier
Silver Spring, MD
www.silverspringtrails.org