TAME COALITION WEBSITE
TAKING ACTION PAGE
- Send a letter to Montgomery Planners to tell them :
No New Highways ! Cancel M83 Highway!
- Hike the Climate Resilience Forest of the Upcounty – the M83 Right-of-Way.
- Engage with the actions of TAME Coalition partner groups.
Send a letter to Montgomery Planners to tell them :
No New Highways ! Cancel M83 !
Action Alert : Tell MontCo Planners : Set a Course for People-Centric Transportation !
Click Here to Send a Letter to Montgomery County Planners
What this Action is : Montgomery County’s General Plan is the guiding light for all of our other plans. It’s updated once a generation – roughly every 20 to 30 years. The Montgomery County Planning Department and Planning Board are now updating Montgomery’s General Plan, calling it « Thrive Montgomery 2050. » They are asking the public to weigh in. TAME is providing testimony and written comments. Our core comment : Create a people-centric transportation plan with No New Highways – including a core Action : Remove the proposed M83 highway from the Master Plan of Highways and Transitways, and from all other master and sector plans.
What’s at Stake : Transit Justice. Climate Justice. Our Health. Our Homes.
Residents of Montgomery Village ; Gaithersburg ; and Germantown, need mobility – the ability to get to jobs, shopping, parks. Building another highway isn’t the answer. What we need is improved transit and safely-walkable and –bikable streets.
The Climate Resilience Forest of the Upcounty is the largest unbroken forest between Clarksburg and Montgomery Village in Gaithersburg. It’s the wooded stream valleys of Whetstone Run, Great Seneca Creek, Wildcat Branch, and Dayspring Creek. This forest that now cleans the air and stores water during storms, is threatened with fragmentation and destruction by a proposed highway that does not now exist : the M83 Highway, a.k.a. Mid-County Highway Extended. Protecting this forest is crucial to climate resilience. The protection begins by removing M83 from the Master Plan of Highways and Transitways.
How I Can Help : TAME Coalition is asking its member groups and resident activists to tell the Planners :
1) Adopt a No-New-Highways policy and embed it in the General Plan;
2) Provide Improved Transit and Protect the Climate Resilience Forest of the Upcounty ; and
3) Cancel the M83 Highway and remove it from the Master Plan of Highways and all master plans and sector plans in which it appears.
Click here to get a sample letter you can personalize and send to the Thrive 2050 planners :
Mr. Khalid Afzal
Project Manager
Thrive Montgomery 2050
khalid.afzal@montgomeryplanning.org
Dear Mr. Afzal,
I’m writing to ask you to include a Policy of « No New Highways » in Montgomery’s General Plan update – Thrive 2050. As a resident of Montgomery County, I support our Ride-On Bus system and our other transit systems, and want them to serve the Upcounty area even more fully. Highways are expensive and divert resources from transit projects. Highways are also conduits of climate-busting carbon emissions and heat emergencies, and they don’t serve people who need to walk, bike, or take transit to get to jobs, shopping, and parks.
The proposed direction of Thrive towards people-centric transportation is the right direction for our future, and a clear Policy of No New Highways will help to accelerate this change. To implement the No New Highways policy, I ask you to include an Action of removing the proposed M-83 highway from the Master Plan of Highways and Transitways, and from any other master plan in which it appears.
Thanks for considering my view on this important matter.
Sincerely,
Your name
Hike the Climate Resilience Forest of the Upcounty – the M83 Right-of-Way.
Residents of Montgomery Village, Gaithersburg, and Germantown communities : TAME encourages you and your family to visit and hike in your own backyard forest – that we call the Climate Resilience Forest of the Upcounty.
Hiking in the woods is a healthy activity that brings you close to nature, fills your lungs with clean air, and lets you exercise at your own pace while being socially-distant during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Using the maps and links below, you can find the nearest entry point to this healing place – the Climate Resilience Forest of the Upcounty.
Map 1 : Proposed M83 Highway Route from Montgomery Village to Germantown.
The map below shows the proposed route (« Master Plan Alignment ») of the M83 highway (Mid-County Highway Extended).
Map 2 : Climate Resilience Forest of the Upcounty
The map below shows the Climate Resilience Forest of the Upcounty – with the Seneca Greenway Trail in purple, located in Montgomery Village, Gaithersburg, and Germantown.
Map 3 : Biodiversity Areas of Germantown – the map below shows the two Biodiversity Areas identified by Montgomery Parks staff that are located in the Germantown area – the North Germantown Greenway Stream Valley Park, and Great Seneca Creek Stream Valley Park. Both of these are threatened with fragmentation and destruction by the proposed M83 highway.
Map Set 1 : Proposed M83 Highway Route from Montgomery Village to Germantown.
The maps below show the proposed route (« Master Plan Alignment ») of the M83 highway (Mid-County Highway Extended).
PLACEHOLDER : MARGARET PLEASE INSERT A LINK TO A SHORT VIDEO CLIP OF A TAME HIKE IN THE SOUTHERN PART OF THE CLIMATE RESILIENCE FOREST.
The first map is a close-up focus on the proposed route of the M83 highway through Montgomery Village neighborhoods. Note the proximity to Watkins Mill Elementary School – and to many residential neighborhoods in Montgomery Village.
Source of these maps : http://www.tamecoalition.org
Map 2 : Climate Resilience Forest of the Upcounty
The map below shows the Climate Resilience Forest of the Upcounty – with the Seneca Greenway Trail in purple, located in Montgomery Village, Gaithersburg, and Germantown.
Can you find your neighborhood here – and your way to this Trail in the Forest?
Source of this map : https://mcatlas.org/parks/?find=J10
Map 3 : Biodiversity Areas of Germantown – the map below shows the two Biodiversity Areas identified by Montgomery Parks staff that are located in the Germantown area – the North Germantown Greenway Stream Valley Park, and Great Seneca Creek Stream Valley Park. Both of these are threatened with fragmentation and destruction by the proposed M83 highway.
Map below is from : http://www.montgomeryplanningboard.org/agenda/2013/documents/ITEM9AttachmentE-M83ParksMemoFINALDRAFT111413doc.pdf
Links to TAME Coalition Member Groups
Each month, we will feature a different TAME Coalition partner group.
August, 2020
Montgomery Countryside Alliance
Land Link Program has linked landowners with farmers on a total of 500 acres in the Ag Reserve.
http://www.mocoalliance.org/news/land-link-profiles-of-two-matches
Check out Dodo Farms, a Land Link project of Montgomery Countryside Alliance :
Did you know that Montgomery County has preserved one-third of our land area for farming and open space ? Learn more here :
http://www.mocoalliance.org/about-ag-reserve.html
MCA tells Montgomery Planners : Thrive 2050 is our General Plan guiding land use for the next 30 years and more – let’s get it right !
http://www.mocoalliance.org/news
Industrial Solar Not Compatible with Farming and Forestlands in the Ag Reserve – will drive up land rents, pricing new farmers out of the market :
This becomes an equity issue. As reported in the Washington Post profile of Dodo Farms, matched with an acre through Land Link in 2018, many of the farmers seeking land through Land Link represent demographics that are currently not well represented in local farming…This was the impetus for starting our Land Link program that has led to the 500+ acres of land we have matched so far. Non-Ag uses being permitted in the Ag Reserve make these matches harder to come by.
September 2020
Action Committee for Transit
Join ACT’s campaign for Pedestrian Safety : http://actfortransit.org/pedestrians.html
Follow ACT on Twitter :
November 2020
Friends of Ten Mile Creek and Little Seneca Reservoir
« The Friends of Ten Mile Creek and Little Seneca Reservoir serve as guardians of Ten Mile Creek and its watershed, preserving and protecting this unique place. Ten Mile Creek’s forests, farms and rare geology provide clean drinking water to Little Seneca Reservoir, a backup drinking water supply for the Washington, DC Metropolitan region and a beloved recreational resource. » http://tenmilecreek.org/
December 2020
Coalition for Smarter Growth
In 2018, Margaret Schoap and the TAME Coalition received the Sanders-Henn Community Hero Award from the Coalition for Smarter Growth. https://www.flickr.com/photos/betterdcregion/40998690384/in/photostream/
Courageous Conversations on Housing, Land Use, and Racism :
Check out CSG’s campaign for Bus Rapid Transit in Montgomery County :
January 2021
Seneca Creek Watershed Partners
« We envision the Seneca Creek Watershed in excellent ecological health with clean water, thriving native flora and fauna, natural beauty, and a community engaged in its enjoyment and protection. »