MoCo Committees to Discuss Senior Transportation & More

The County Council’s Health and Human Services (HHS) Committee and the Transportation, Infrastructure, Energy and Environment (T and E) Committee will hold a joint work session on senior transportation programs at 9:30 a.m. on Monday, Feb. 4.

The committees will address recommendations that could lead to improvements in the growing need to help seniors get around the county.

The HHS Committee, which is chaired by George Leventhal and includes Councilmembers Nancy Navarro and Craig Rice, and the T and E Committee, which is chaired by Roger Berliner and includes Councilmembers Nancy Floreen and Hans Riemer, will meet in the Seventh Floor Hearing Room of the Council Office Building at 100 Maryland Ave. in Rockville.

The meeting will be televised live by County Cable Montgomery (CCM—Cable Channel 6 on Comcast and RCN, Channel 30 on Verizon). The broadcast will be available via streaming through the County Web site at www.montgomerycountymd.gov.

The discussion will focus on how to help the nearly 120,000 county residents who are 65 and older “age in place” if they choose to do so. Having adequate transportation assistance is a key factor, but the worksession will stress that even in a county that is considered to have very good public transportation options, those services, in many cases, are not adequate for some seniors.

At 10:15, the T and E Committee will address County Executive Isiah Leggett’s request for a special appropriation of $13.9 million to replace all 60 Champion buses that are part of the County’s Ride On fleet. In July, the County Executive ordered all of the buses removed from use after the seventh bus fire since 2009.

The T and E Committee also will hold a worksession on plans to build a pedestrian tunnel beneath Georgia Avenue from the Forest Glen Metro Rail station to connect other key aspects of the transportation area for users. Several alternatives are being studied in the early stages of the project. The worksession will provide direction on whether the project should proceed to the more detailed planning stage.

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