The bike safety unit in gym class was supposed to be about teaching third-graders to use hand signals and negotiate intersections.
There was just one problem - some of the kids at Elkridge Elementary School, in crowded eastern Howard County, don't know how to ride bicycles at all, much less ride them safely.
Chalk it up as one more symptom of a larger problem afflicting suburbs in the Baltimore area, say local educators, parents and children. In Elkridge and other fast-growing parts of the state, kids have run out of room to play outdoors.
"What we find is not only how many third-graders don't know how to ride, but how many don't have bikes at all because of the space factor," said Elkridge physical education teacher Conrad Brookhart. "It's sad."
Shortage of recreational space is an issue faced by suburbs everywhere, as sprawl claims open space and traffic makes the smallest roads dangerous for bikes. In southern Carroll County, sports fields are at such a premium that officials worry each year that they'll have to turn kids away from Little League and soccer programs.
But the issue is particularly pressing in older, inner-ring suburbs such as Elkridge and much of Baltimore County. There, "in-fill" development often proceeds without the planning found in newer, outer suburbs, where builders are required to set aside open space in their projects.
In some areas, this has made for an unusual dynamic: Families who moved to the suburbs in search of space find themselves envying city residents the parks and vacant lots left behind in the city. Looking back, one Elkridge mother said, it seemed she had had more room growing up in the Bronx than her children do now.
"If you go [into Baltimore], you find parks and playgrounds," said Ruth Baisden of the Greater Parkville Community Council in Baltimore County. "We're finding that when we were developed, we were developed with less open space" than in the newer suburbs.
Nowhere is the problem more evident than in Elkridge, a one-time tobacco port squeezed in between Interstate 95, U.S. 1 and Route 100. Census numbers show that the 6-square-mile Elkridge area has doubled in population in the past decade, to more than 20,000, partly because of county attempts to concentrate development in the county's east to help preserve its rural west.
The growth is hard to miss. Large homes are crammed along Montgomery Road, while townhouses, condominiums, apartment complexes and mobile home parks vie for space in the corridor between Interstate 95 and U.S. 1.
Meanwhile, play room has become scarce. Back yards at the largest of new homes are barely big enough for a Wiffle ball game.
Squeezing in play
In the Rockburn Commons townhouse complex, one mother has set up a basketball hoop for her two children in one of her two allotted parking spaces, for a lack of anywhere else to put it - despite the risk posed by passing cars.
Another mother, Annette Croft, set up a swing set in the tiny yard behind her townhouse before the townhouse association told her it violated their rules.
"Every person who moves in says, `It's a nice neighborhood, but there isn't anything for the kids to do,'" said Karen Adams, a teacher without children who has lived at Rockburn Commons for 14 years.
At two nearby mobile home parks along U.S. 1, the units are so densely packed that splash pools, trampolines and swing sets are forbidden. At Elkridge Mobile Home Park, bike-riding is not allowed; at the adjacent Capital Mobile Home Park, kids can ride only if they stay off the grass.
One 7-year-old girl hasn't been able to graduate from training wheels because she can't handle the speed bumps on the park's narrow roads, children there said.
"It's hard getting out of the trailer park without going on lawns," said Chris McComas, 12, who was teaching Larry "Booter" Poole, 5, to ride on a recent afternoon. "It takes me an hour to get my friends and come down here."
There is no recreation center in Elkridge, and the nearest YMCA is in Ellicott City, a 10-minute drive away. The only local park is Rockburn Branch Park, but it is a treacherous walk up sidewalk-less Montgomery Road for most kids.
On the same afternoon as Chris McComas and his friends were hanging around the mobile home park, the 12 basketball courts and six tennis courts at Rockburn Branch were deserted. The park's playground is closed for renovations until next year; some parents now drive to Columbia in search of a slide.
Seeking more convenient open space, community leaders have turned their attention to a wooded, county-owned 15-acre parcel on U.S. 1. Within walking distance of the new homes, the parcel would be ideal for a recreation center, residents say.
