I come at the smart growth discussion very conscious of the fact that I have been in the Washington, D.C., area for the past 15 years, living in Montgomery County. As I go around the country and attend a variety of conferences, often on this issue, I sense that the two groups still tend to talk right past each other. To some extent, this is the challenge in smart growth. Being on the steering committee for this panel, I was the one who asked that we have someone from Charlottesville come out and talk to our group because I was very impressed hearing Hannah Twaddell speak on this earlier in the year. I think they have done a nice job in trying to bridge those sometimes contradictory messages. One message is that obviously we are experiencing tremendous growth. We don't have a transportation system that can really meet the needs of the growth that exists, and the bottom line is that we need to build more capacity and more infrastructure.
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