Good Evening.

My name is Mary Vogel. I live at 5703 Linda Lane, Camp Springs, MD 20748, less than a half mile from the last Metro Green Line Station that is currently under construction at Branch Avenue. I also represent the Prince Georges County Sierra Club on Commission 2000, but I want to make it perfectly clear that I am NOT representing the Sierra Club tonight. The ideas expressed are solely my own.

I want to present to you a vision for how I would like to see my part of the county grow. Before I get into the heart of my vision, I will say that even though I run a business, I am not an advocate of endless growth and expansion. In fact, there is a part of me that would like to see growth come to a screeching halt.

I don't want more traffic. I certainly don't want more highways. I don't want a wider Beltway or even a wider bridge. I don't want more acres in parking lots. Likewise, I don't want another tree that protects a riparian area or a wetland to come down. I don't want my nieces and nephew, who can't yet drive, along with my parents, who may soon lose the ability to drive, to be prisoners of the suburbs.

But I don't think we have been going in the right direction with the land use patterns we have developed to prevent the kinds of things that I don't want. I fear that if all we do is try to hold the line on development the way it is currently shaped, we'll find that our neighbors from Charles County have filled the parking lots of our new Metro Stations and the only thing they will have brought to us is POLLUTION as they drive by our homes on the way to clog those lots. So, let me tell you what I do want.

First, I want to take advantage of our $10 billion investment in Metro Rail and focus high-quality, mixed-use office, retail and residential development around the new Green Line Metro Stations Southern Avenue, Naylor Road, Suitland and Branch Avenue at sufficient densities to support transit.

There should also be safe pedestrian/bicyclist linkages between the Metro Stations and quality natural areas for example: (1) link the Suitland Bog to the Suitland Metro Station, (2) link the Magnolia Bog of the Oxon Run corridor to the Naylor Road and Southern Avenue Metro Stations. A boardwalk trail and other appropriate resource protection similar to the Suitland Bog's should be in place first, of course, (3) link Henson Creek riparian corridor to the Branch Avenue Metro Station.

Let's develop these Stations using the state-of-the-art in green building techniques with naturescaped natural areas everywhere that we don't have buildings or pavement. Let these developments be models for protection of forests and wetlands and other special natural areas. Let's have just the right mix of employment, retail and residential to support transit and to support our economy. Let's include childcare centers and community centers and community celebration areas. Let's include art of all kinds and cultural events. Let's create real communities at these Metro Stations communities that are connected with nature, communities that FEATURE nature, communities that protect and restore what we have left of wild lands in the county even if they happen to be inside the Beltway.

Let's also put tremendous energy into restoring some of the forested corridor that building the Metro Rail destroyed. I predict that if we do these things, visitors to our Nation's Capitol will take the Green Line just to see such model communities for the 21st Century. I predict that if we do a good enough job some of our neighbors from Charles County will want to give up their sit-down mowers and their asocial privacy lots and join us in our truly livable and sustainable transit-oriented COMMUNITIES surrounded by high quality PUBLIC open space and natural areas.