Bay Bridge

Woodward Reese "Wood" Smith, a retired ironworker who during his nearly 50-year career worked on some of the nation's most notable bridges, died July 13 of pneumonia at his Loch Raven Village home. He was 93. The son of a construction superintendent and a homemaker, Mr. Smith was born and raised in New Market, Pa., and was a 1935 graduate of New Cumberland High School. Mr. Smith worked as a laborer for the Pennsylvania Railroad. After attending business college for a year in Harrisburg, he went to work for Bethlehem Steel Corp.

The near-record amount of runoff that coursed down the Susquehanna River and into the Chesapeake Bay last spring has created the lowest salinity levels seen in the upper bay since 1985, when water monitoring stations were established. Gauges at the Conowingo Dam registered 5 trillion gallons of discharge during the three-month gusher that ended in May, enough to replace the water in the upper bay every 30 days, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The spring total is surpassed only by 1993, when 5.5 trillion gallons gushed from the river's mouth.

The last Saturday in June was the day we said goodbye to Baltimore and packed it up for the summer. As a child, it was a day I anticipated all year, then remembered for its unforgettable set of rituals. By the end of June the pace of our domestic life was slowing. The heat had set in, and, as a neighbor once observed, there was never an electric fan in our home. Baltimore was just different in the summer. The downtown department stores closed at noon on Saturdays. As you walked the streets you heard Orioles games on radios through all the open windows.

A boater discovered decomposed remains in the Chesapeake Bay south of the Bay Bridge in Anne Arundel County shortly before noon on Sunday, Maryland Natural Resources Police said. The remains were sent to the Chief Medical Examiner's office in Baltimore for an autopsy, police said. Because of decomposition, the age, gender and race of the victim could not be determined, officials said. It could be weeks before the autopsy is completed and more details are revealed, a Natural Resources Police spokesman said Monday.

Right up front, I must confess that I am part of the reason the Maryland Transportation Authority is considering a proposal to jack up tolls to dizzying heights. You see, I'm a parasite on the system. Have been for years. And if you, too, commute into downtown Baltimore from south of the city, you may be a freeloader, too. My daily commute from Howard County takes me up Interstate 95. I pay my way as far as Caton Avenue — in the form of gas taxes, vehicle registration fees, sales taxes and so on. But once I cross the city line, I enjoy a free ride all the way to the end of Interstate 395 at Conway Street.

Users of Maryland toll facilities face what could be the most dramatic across-the-board increases in the state's history under a plan being developed by the Maryland Transportation Authority. The proposed tolls are part of a four-year package of $210 million in increases that would put some of the fattest sacred cows in Maryland's transportation system on the chopping block — increasing Bay Bridge tolls, which have remained frozen since 1975, to $5 this year and $8 in 2013, and commuter rates that haven't been touched in 22 years.

Last month's horrific crash that threw a 70-year-old retired sportswriter off the Bay Bridge and killed him underscores the fact that long bridges and tunnels are an especially dangerous place for drivers to be on less than their best behavior. The investigation into the April 18 crash in which a truck rear-ended a broken-down car isn't complete, so judgment will be suspended as to who was at fault. But if that crash was the result of a traffic infraction, it raises a question about why violations on the Bay Bridge and other toll bridges and in tunnels are treated like garden-variety offenses.

Harry Blauvelt had just dropped off his beloved yellow lab, Elvis, at doggy day care Monday and was returning home to Kent Island when his car became disabled on the Bay Bridge. The retired USA Today golf writer, who chronicled the rise of Tiger Woods during a long career in sports journalism, had stepped out of his 2001 Honda Accord when, police said, a 2003 International truck slammed into the vehicle and pushed it into Blauvelt. The 70-year-old Chester resident was flung from the bridge's eastbound span into the water more than 50 feet below.

A strange, tragic day on the Bay Bridge resulted in the death of one man thrown from the eastbound span and into the bay when a truck ran into his car and life-threatening injuries to a another man who was died after going over the side of the westbound span. Meanwhile, a third person was pulled from the water under the bridge with life-threatening injuries. The first incident, in which a truck plowed into the rear of a disabled vehicle about 10:25 a.m., closed the eastbound span for several hours and led to massive traffic backups.

On a strange, tragic day at the Bay Bridge, three people were pulled from the waters under the twin spans, one of whom was killed after being thrown into the bay when a truck ran into his car, and another who died in what might have been a suicide. Another person plucked from the bay within a six-hour period was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries, having survived a 180-foot fall from the westbound span. Police would not comment on whether two of the incidents were suicides but said the victims' vehicles were found abandoned on the bridge in both cases.