Baltimore And Washington

PERHAPS IN AN earlier era, Columbia would be a child of mass transportation, created as a whistle stop on a rail line or a way station for buses traveling between Baltimore and Washington. But it seems little thought was given to transit needs when the planned town in Howard County came into being 30 years ago. There is some bus service and limited transit to the big cities to the north and south. But what would seem a natural location for a local train or light-rail has none.So most commuters from Columbia prefer to drive their own cars to work and people in the cities who want to get to jobs in Columbia had better have their own transportation.

IT'S A SIGN of the times that when Baltimore's B&O Railroad Museum recently sponsored a trip to Maryland's railroad landmarks, it had to be conducted by bus.Railroads still are a major factor in transporting freight. But, as the statistics for this busy holiday season show, airplanes and cars have replaced passenger trains as the travel mode of choice for most Americans.More than four decades have passed since passenger service ceased from Baltimore to York, Pa., Annapolis and Bel Air. And while state-financed MARC commuter lines still provide service to Washington, they are hardly the kinds of lifelines as the trains of yore, which carried pretty much everything we needed -- from milk to mail -- in addition to passengers.

Baltimore's 12.3 percent decline in population between 1990 and 1998 was the second-largest drop among U.S. cities with 500,000 or more residents, according to figures released yesterday by the U.S. Census Bureau.Only Washington, where the population shrank 13.8 percent during the decade, had a greater percentage loss than Baltimore among the country's 26 largest cities, census figures show.The only other large cities that lost people during the decade were Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Detroit, Boston and Memphis, Tenn.

The worsening economy in Maryland was confirmed in a third-quarter report by Grant Thornton, a national accounting and management-consulting firm with a local office.The Grant Thornton Index, consisting of seven equally weighted economic indicators, declined 0.23 for Baltimore in the July-September period, hitting 109.1. For Washington, the index dropped 0.90 to 109.9. This is the third quarterly decline for Baltimore since the end of 1989, when the index was at 110.2.The index includes factory hours, nonfarm employment, construction permits, retail sales, business starts, business failures and money supply.

The Midwest remained the least expensive region in the nation to buy a house during the July-September period, a National Association of Home Builders report released yesterday shows.Listed below are the 10 most affordable and 10 least affordable U.S. housing markets in the third quarter, along with the rankings for Baltimore and Washington. The number corresponding to each area is the percentage of the homes sold that were within reach of the median-income household at the prevailing mortgage interest rate.

Red-faced Maryland Rail Commuter officials have issued a written apology to riders after admitting that trains broke down, arrived late or were canceled more often last month than at any time in recent history.And those foul-ups, which included a lengthy delay after a Washington-bound express train ran out of diesel fuel in Bowie, have prompted MARC to offer travelers one-time $5 discounts on weekly and monthly tickets."The past few weeks have been one of the worst, if not the worst, performance periods for MARC service," State Railroad Administration officials wrote in a flier distributed to the line's 17,000 daily riders Tuesday evening.

Browning-Ferris Industries Inc., one of the nation's largest trash companies, today will dedicate offices it has moved to Annapolis from northern Anne Arundel County.Ceremonies will include BFI Chairman of the Board William D. Ruckelshaus presenting Anne Arundel Community College with a five-year, $25,000 scholarship. Each year, a $5,000 scholarship will go to a student in environmental studies. Mr. Ruckelshaus served as both the first and fifth administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Money Magazine has chosen the combined Columbia/Ellicott City area as the second-best small city to live in America for 2010. The magazine's annual ranking had the same area as No. 8 two years ago. Calling the region an "economic powerhouse," the magazine stressed the thousands of federal and related jobs coming to nearby Fort Meade and the National Security Agency in Anne Arundel County as one major reason for the compliment. The magazine mentions the county's "excellent schools," relatively low foreclosure and unemployment rates (5.2 percent)

Ask Louise Sengupta why she decided to move her fledgling Harford County technology company to Columbia last summer, and she'll rattle off 10 answers that all basically boil down to one thing: location. In the past 10 or 15 years, Howard County has become a prime location for high-tech companies, largely because it's between Baltimore and Washington, within easy reach of the amenities of both cities. It is also near Interstate 95 and the Baltimore-Washington International Airport, and draws from a highly educated labor pool stretching from Virginia to Pennsylvania.

A proposed high-speed magnetic levitation train whisking passengers between Baltimore and Washington in just 16 minutes could become one of the world's most financially successful mass transit systems, a new study concludes.Preliminary findings of a study commissioned by the Maryland Department of Transportation estimate that a magnetic levitation train would cost $30 million to $40 million a year to operate and maintain. But the train would rake in at least $60 million a year charging one-way passenger fares of $10 to $20, the study found.