Beltway

Six mentally challenged adults and children suffered minor injuries yesterday afternoon when the van they were riding in was involved in a chain-reaction collision on the inner loop of the Baltimore Beltway near Towson, state police said. A passenger in a car also was injured. Trooper Ryan Orner of the Golden Ring Barracks said the van, operated by Yellow Transportation Services and carrying several passengers, was eastbound on Interstate 695 and nearing the York Road exit about 4:30 p.m. when a car in front of the van slowed during a brief back-up.

Drivers might endure traffic jams on Interstate 695 this weekend while traffic patterns are altered at the Dulaney Valley Road interchange as part of a continuing project to make that section of the highway safer and reduce congestion.Between 7 p.m. Sunday and 5 a.m. Monday, the three lanes of the Beltway's outer loop will be shifted so the right shoulder becomes the right lane. The same will happen on the inner loop starting at 7 p.m. Monday and ending at 5 a.m. Tuesday.The lane shifts are part of the $7 million reconstruction of the Beltway/Dulaney Valley Road interchange and construction on the Dulaney Valley Road bridge.

Two ramps on the Beltway will be closed overnight to allow construction crews to shift Beltway traffic to new lanes. Ramps at Exit 12 (Wilkens Avenue) and Exit 12A (Leeds Avenue) will be shut down from midnight to 7 a.m. tomorrow. State police will begin single-lane closures at 9 o'clock tonight, which will continue until 11 a.m. tomorrow. During the closures, motorists will be directed to marked detour routes. The construction is part of the State Highway Administration's $47 million project to widen the outer loop of the Beltway between Frederick Road and the Interstate 95 interchange.

The truck that crashed into a pedestrian bridge over the Baltimore Beltway on Tuesday exceeded permissible height and width limits and never stood a chance of reaching its destination in Canada, state police said yesterday.Had it somehow avoided the Maiden Choice footbridge, the truck and its oversized load was headed for six other bridges around the Beltway that it would have been unable to clear.Police and transportation investigators are trying to determine why the rig's driver, Paul McIntosh of Brussels, Ontario, would set out with such obviously oversized cargo.

Repair work on a broken water main and damaged roadway is expected to cause traffic disruptions today and tomorrow at one of Baltimore County's most heavily traveled intersections - Liberty Road and Washington Avenue - and could slow motorists on the nearby Baltimore Beltway. Kurt L. Kocher, spokesman for Baltimore's Department of Public Works, said a break in a 12-inch main yesterday afternoon under the intersection caused a section of the road to collapse. Only six water customers were without service, Kocher said, but the break - reported during the evening rush hour - seriously affected traffic on Liberty Road and on the Beltway exits to westbound Liberty.

In the stop-and-go world of Baltimore-area traffic, there's a lot more braking than commuters and transportation officials would like. Take Russell Allen, a Federal Hill resident who gets in his silver Ford Edge every weekday morning before 7:30 and steers south toward Fort Meade and the region's biggest bottleneck: Baltimore-Washington Parkway and Route 175. The trip starts fine. But around Route 100, Allen's windshield relfects a dazzling array of red taillights. "And it stays that way until I get to work - four miles and 20 minutes later," said Allen, 52, who works for the Army.

As if Baltimore's Beltway weren't loopy enough.Over the past two months, state highway crews have erected a dozen signs under selected Interstate 695 route markers with the designation of "Inner Loop" or "Outer Loop."The signs are supposed to help motorists figure out which way they're headed on the busy interstate. The inner loop designates the interior circle of the divided highway, the outer loop the outside half.But, after posting the signs, the State Highway Administration began to realize that a lot of drivers don't understand what the heck this inner and outer loop stuff means.

The state is kicking off this week a $19 million, two-year project to improve five bridges and roadways near the interchange of the Baltimore Beltway and Interstate 83 in Baltimore County. The project is part of the state's continuing effort to improve highway safety and prepare for expansion of the northern section of the Beltway, according to the Maryland Department of Transportation's State Highway Administration. The following bridges and roads will be affected: The Joppa Road bridge over the Beltway will be replaced with a wider and higher bridge to allow for expansion of the highway below.

Starting this weekend, motorists who travel on Dulaney Valley Road through Towson should be prepared to sit longer in traffic, as two loops of the cloverleaf interchange at the Beltway are snipped -- a $7 million project to make the intersection safer.The redesign of the interchange is the first of several projects that will eliminate loops in cloverleaf intersections in the continuing effort to improve heavily traveled Interstate 695."This weekend is the first major step to making the project happen," said State Highway Administration spokeswoman Valerie Burnette Edgar.

Contractors for the State Highway Administration have begun rebuilding the York Road bridge over the Baltimore Beltway, one in a series of Towson-area traffic improvements. The project, which state transportation officials expect to take two years, began Friday night as workers began setting up the work area, placing jersey barriers along the interchange ramps and putting up "work zone" signs. The work area will cover about half a mile of York Road, from Fairmount Avenue to Cavan Drive.