I’m Allison Hunter Coleman, and I’m president of the homeowners association in my community of Richmond Hills in Efland.  We have a Mebane address, but we do live in Efland.

I came to speak really for myself and for people in my community.  There is a bus that comes through our community, and it picks up people and takes them into Duke, but if you catch the bus, it takes you an hour to get there whereas if you took a car, it would take 20 minutes,  I can’t take it, because it doesn’t run when I go to work.  I work on the weekends, I go at 7 PM.  It doesn’t help me at all.

If I do go on Monday … which is a day I could take it … I’d have to leave an hour and a half before I would even wake up to get there in time to go to work.  Once we get over to Duke, you have to walk down to the bus station and then take another bus to get to where I work … which is Duke Regional.

I want to mention that my daughter went to school in Atlanta.  She came back and moved to Carrboro because of the bus system, and then when she got there she found they had limited service.  Her husband would get to work either 45 minutes early, or if he missed the bus, he’d get there late.  So, they’ve decided to move out of the area.

My son … who I finally got to move out of the house at 25 years old … he now drives to Chapel Hill.  He has to go all the way to the Friday Center.  He drives all the way to Durham to go to the parking there to get to his job, so he has to drive about 35 minutes to get to work and then catch the bus in.  I’m only mentioning this because the rail system sounds like a wonderful thing until you realize that we have a cupcake for a bus system.  We don’t have the frosting.  We don’t have the nuts.  We don’t have the sprinkles.  We need that first.

Thank you.