Commuters

Those who travel by MARC train to get to work are in for a treat as Harford Commuter Assistance, elected officials and special guests will be on hand from 5:30 to 9 a.m. at the Edgewood MARC Train Station May 2, and the Aberdeen MARC Train Station May 8 with giveaways and light refreshments as well as commuting information as part of May's designation as Clean Commute Month. These are commuters who, day after day, board the MARC train heading south to Baltimore and other destinations, includingWashington, D.C.to get to work.

Last week presented the sort of opportunity that elected officials crave. As Gov. Martin O'Malley signed the gas tax increase into law, he announced a slew of new Maryland transportation projects - $1.2 billion in all - that can now move forward to relieve congestion, make roads safer and stimulate economic development. And while all of them, from widening U.S. 29 in Howard County to designing several new light rail lines in the Washington and Baltimore areas, have their constituencies and benefits, none is likely to reap more immediate rewards than expanding MARC commuter rail operations, including allowing Penn Line trains to run on weekends.

There is a small but memorable scene in Russian novelist and dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago in which he sits upon the banks of the Belomor Canal, observing two nearly identical barges equally loaded with pine logs moving past each other in opposite directions. "And canceling the one load against the other," the author wrote, "we get zero." In seemingly endless lines moving in opposite directions, Maryland drivers spend more time behind the wheel going to and from work and school than ever.

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.

When it comes to traffic gridlock, Baltimore still is light years away from becoming a Los Angeles or Washington. But the bottlenecks are multiplying and the confusion of commuters is mounting. It is harder and more time-consuming to get from home to work.Doug Birch's Oct. 7 Sunday Sun story on commuting pains, complete with a list of readers' worst traffic headaches, highlights the need for continuing action in Annapolis to find some answers before congestion harms this region's economic vitality.

Chances are many Baltimore commuters will spend the weekend poring over maps, checking out city byways and back streets, and dreaming of something that may not exist come Monday morning's rush hour: a clear shot into downtown. The Jones Falls Expressway as we know it disappeared Friday evening, with one lane closed in each direction near 29th Street by barrels and barriers, and marked with flashing signs and arrows. It may stay that way for up to two months while crews conduct emergency repairs to damaged drainage pipes and bolster the highway's underpinnings.

There are a couple things that make my daily commute a little worse. The first is what I call "ramp riders," motorists who take an exit ramp not to exit, but to bypass slower traffic by continuing onto the on-ramp to merge into traffic ahead of where they were when they exited. This is especially prevalent on Maryland Route 32 at U.S. Route 1 in the afternoons in the northbound directions. It's gotten worse in the last couple years with the influx of workers to the Fort Meade area. This also occurs in the afternoon on Route 95 North at Calverton (Route 212)

On the theory that you can still get there from here -- but just barely -- we'd like to hear from Baltimore-area commuters who have suffered and triumphed during their daily odyssey to the factory or office.The Sun is taking a look at the worst of the region's commuting problems and plans to recount some of the misadventures of motorists and Metro, train and bus riders who race to work by the dawn's early light.To tell your tale, park yourself at a Touch-tone phone and dial Sundial any time today or tomorrow.

WESTMINSTER - Commuters from the city won't be able to hop a train to Baltimore in the future since the existing lines cannot be used for high-speed passenger use, the president of Maryland Midland Railroad told the Train Station Committee at its first meeting.Although the tracks are good for freight, Paul Denton said, a trip to the Owings Mills metro station would take an hour or longer since speeds on the line reach only 35 or 40 miles an hour.Committee members then discussed other uses for the proposed train station which would be a replica of the one which stood in town at the turn of the century.

For long-frazzled rush-hour commuters, help may be on the way. But first, they've got to give up their stubborn streak of independence and recruit a friend or neighbor who wants to join in car-pooling it to work. Then all they will have to do is hop on the high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane and zip along the interstate, bypassing all those solo drivers tied up in endless traffic jams.That's the vision of highway planners who open their first HOV lane later this month in Montgomery County. If this experiment is as successful as expected, there will be HOV lanes for cars with two or more passengers along the Capital Beltway, the Baltimore Beltway, Interstate 95 north and south of Baltimore and U.S. 50 between Washington and Annapolis.

Several crashes slowed the Baltimore area's morning commute Friday as motorists navigated heavy rain. A single-vehicle crash in Anne Arundel County closed the shoulder of the inner loop of Interstate 695 at Route 295 as of 7:20 a.m., according to the state Department of Transportation. Also, in Harford County, a two-vehicle collision closed the shoulder of southbound Interstate 95 near the exit for Route 152 as of 7:52 a.m., officials said. Luke.Broadwater@baltsun.com Twitter.com/lukebroadwater

Accidents were bogging down the Thursday morning commute in the city and in Baltimore County, police said. In the city, northbound traffic on Martin Luther King Boulevard was being detoured onto West Fayette Street after an accident between Fayette and Saratoga streets, and police were calling the traffic impact "severe. " Drivers were also being asked to steer clear of North Charles Street near Chestnut Avenue in Baltimore County, where a pedestrian was reported struck by a car Thursday morning, police said.

Winter is not quite ready to leave Baltimore. Weather forecasters called for a wintry mix of rain and snow to start falling late Sunday and into Monday that was likely to complicate morning commutes. The forecast is for "a slushy inch" of accumulation at most in Baltimore on Monday, said National Weather Service meteorologist Kevin Witt. Parts of Carroll, Baltimore, Harford and Howard counties could see 1 to 3 inches. Much of the accumulation is expected to be on grassy areas.

I smiled when I read Susan Reimer 's column about locking one's car doors to prevent thieves from stealing valuables from inside ("Hey Annapolis car owners: Lock it up!" March 7). It seemed so small-town 1950s America, so different from the reality of people who have to park their cars in Baltimore, where locking your car door is completely irrelevant. Here, thieves will smash your side windows and grab your personal items - even out of the glove box, where they know you've stashed your GPS - in less time than it takes to open an unlocked door.

Having won approval in both chambers of Maryland's General Assembly, a landmark bill to abolish the state's death penalty awaits only Gov. Martin O'Malley's signature before becoming law. It is a tremendous political and moral victory for Mr. O'Malley, a long-time opponent of capital punishment who campaigned for a repeal during his first term only to come up short. That leaves only one major item of unfinished business on his agenda regarding the issue: Commuting the sentences of the five men currently on Maryland's death row to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Several incidents including two on the inner loop of Interstate 695, forced lane closures during Thursday morning's commute, according to the state Department of Transportation. A one-vehicle collision on Interstate 695 in Baltimore County at the Cove Road exit closed the inner loop right off-ramp and one of two inner loop shoulders at 8:23 a.m., DOT said. Also, all lanes of the inner loop of I-695 near Edmondson Avenue were closed at 7:35 a.m., after State Police said a pedestrian was found dead along the interstate.

Commuting can be scary.The death of Pam Basu in Howard County has focused public attention to the burgeoning crime of carjacking, a violent form of automobile theft.No longer are traffic accidents the paramount concern of the daily motorist -- although with 710 traffic fatalities on Maryland roads last year, they still ought to be.Now we have to worry about some criminal sticking a gun in our face and stealing our car at a stoplight.It is a deadly business that hits many of us, literally, where we live.

I smiled when I read Susan Reimer 's column about locking one's car doors to prevent thieves from stealing valuables from inside ("Hey Annapolis car owners: Lock it up!" March 7). It seemed so small-town 1950s America, so different from the reality of people who have to park their cars in Baltimore, where locking your car door is completely irrelevant. Here, thieves will smash your side windows and grab your personal items - even out of the glove box, where they know you've stashed your GPS - in less time than it takes to open an unlocked door.

High winds and an overturned tractor trailer closed the eastbound and westbound spans of the Bay Bridge for several hours Wednesday afternoon. It reopened to passenger vehicles in both directions just after 6 p.m. The accident happened at about 2 p.m., when the westbound vehicle was struck by a gust of wind and forced against the guardrail. The passenger-side tires of both the trailer and cab were lifted from the pavement. The trailer was twisted like a piece of aluminum foil. The unidentified driver received minor injuries and was taken to Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis for treatment, officials said.

Baltimore draws 117,027 commuters daily from Baltimore County, among the highest single-source commute totals in the nation, according to a survey released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. The number - the equivalent of filling both M&T Bank Stadium and Camden Yards to capacity - ranks the city 16th in worker flow behind the New York, Los Angeles and Dallas suburbs and the number ofcommuters going from Prince George's County to jobs in Washington, D.C. Included in the total of 207,000 people who come to Baltimore each day for work are 21,719 from Anne Arundel County and 17,966 from Harford County, according to estimates from the American Community Survey.