Good morning, everyone.

Thank you, Chair Oriada.

And I had my notes here.

Welcome to Secretary Secretary Thompson, but wanted to extend my well wishes to Secretary Thompson and says thank you, Mr.

Joe McAndrew.

Um, elected officials and MDOT representatives, thank you all for coming today to present uh the draft FY27, FY32, M.D.

Draft Consolidated Transportation Plan.

And here are our concerns, priorities, and transportation needs for Prince George's County.

Uh

the county executive has taken immediate action to elevate Prince George's County, forging new partnerships and strengthening existing ones.

Like the great response and collaboration we received from the state highway administration on addressing the recent storm held uh earlier this month.

Many thanks to Governor Moore, MDOT, and SAJ for their support in addressing that storm.

Recently at the Maryland Association of Counties Conference, we had a healthy exchange where Madam County Executive led the discussion in raising the most pressing issues facing the county, including how we can work together and build an even stronger collaboration.

In order to delve deeper into these matters and present the county's uh perspective, I'm pleased to introduce Madam County Executive Aisha Ann Braveway.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Oh right, wonderful.

Thank you.

Thank you so much to our deputy chief administrative officer uh Kevin Stephen.

It's wonderful to be here with all of you, along with uh our outgoing acting director who will be joining you shortly.

Um Shea, Ola Benlay, thank you so much for all of your service and you and your entire team have been tremendous, as well as our partners here on the County Council led by our council chair,

uh

Crystal Oriatha.

Uh so thank you for coming to Prince George's County.

Consider this your second home because we always welcome you.

Uh we are home to many state roads and highways, and uh we appreciate the partnership uh that we share.

Um the Moore admin uh Miller administration truly understands uh the importance of ensuring that we have a vibrant um and well-maintained uh transit system here in the county.

It is key to economic development.

Um the state's assistance and navigating and implementing the New Carrollton better utilizing investments to leverage development or build uh award has been instrumental in advancing this critical transit hub.

We also appreciate the state's continued effort and support in the Greenbelt area.

Prince George's County and Greenbelt will be the home of the FBI.

And uh investments in in and around that transit station is extremely important, not just for Prince George's County, but for the future of the state of Maryland.

Prince George's County's transportation network provides a strong foundation, as I mentioned, for economic growth with 15 metro stations, eight mark stations, and one Amtrak station, and 11 Purple Line stations coming on board.

Uh, the county has a significant opportunity to connect communities, expand access to jobs, and help shift the Washington region's economic uh uh outlook for the future.

So this is really important to us.

In addition uh to ensuring that we are focusing on our metro stations, we also want to focus not just on obviously the infrastructure improvements we need throughout the county, but really the maintenance of those roadways too.

Uh we launched uh strike force, which is a countywide effort to strengthen litter removal, uh median maintenance, mowing, and other beautification efforts, and a lot of what our residents see are on our state roads, and so we want an even stronger partnership and collaboration there to ensure that these corridors are as beautiful as I say as the people who live here in the county.

Um, and so we appreciate uh your understanding of that.

Um Kevin mentioned um I was able to reach out to the governor during the last storm, and he committed resources here to Prince George's County so that we could address uh some of the needs of our communities.

And um, I want to again thank him and also thank you and your contractors for showing

up

and being available to us.

We were able to get a lot accomplished in a short period of time because of that level of collaboration.

Many of our residents, especially in the southern part of the county, are very concerned, and we'll have further discussions about this on Virginia's proposal for the South Side Express Lanes project.

Our goal is to ensure that wherever that project ends up, Prince George's County benefits.

In many different roles.

But one thing that was consistent was my understanding that the folks in the southern part of our county want and deserve rail across the Wilson Bridge.

And so as we look at the future of the southern part of our county and the infrastructure in the southern part of our county, it has to include rail across the Wilson Bridge.

So I just really want to stress that to you.

As we negotiate, we need to establish a funding mechanism that will establish that as a goal for the future.

The purple line represents another opportunity to strengthen regional connectivity.

As the project approaches passenger service, we must redouble efforts to ensure safe access to stations and travel, safe travel, excuse me, along and across the corridor.

This work should include improvements to existing plans wherever possible to protect protect pedestrians, bicyclists, transit riders, and motorists.

And there were a lot of, I think, concerns around safety even now.

And so it's really important that we look at those corridors and make sure that those sidewalks are connected and that people can you know walk safely in those areas.

That's extremely important to us.

We are sitting very close to, well, really in downtown Largo, which is a part of our blue line corridor extended, and so uh the investments that we're making on Maryland 214 and Central Avenue is extremely important to us.

We recognize that there's uh probably about four or five billion in economic activity that will be generated along this corridor, but we need our roads to keep up with the demand that we'll have uh for roads for uh or for for uh pedestrians as well as cars uh accessing our roadways.

So we are excited about uh your understanding and your uh work with us on that.

Um we are also uh supportive of and I know we work together uh to advance vision zero uh so that we can have basically no pedestrian uh or or bicyclists die on our roadways, and so ensuring that our roads uh are safe and that uh we have the appropriate lights and maintenance is extremely important.