Drawbridge

The first phase of a $14.5 million project by the Maryland Transportation Authority to replace the decks of the Baltimore Beltway drawbridge over Curtis Creek will begin next week, reducing travel lanes and creating new traffic patterns. On Tuesday, crews will shut down the eastbound outer loop of Interstate 695 between Quarantine Road (Exit 1) and Route 10 at 8 p.m. so they can place a barrier wall between the two lanes to allow two-way traffic. On Jan. 7, the inner loop will be closed down.

The first phase of a $14.5 million project by the Maryland Transportation Authority to replace the decks of the Baltimore Beltway drawbridge over Curtis Creek will begin next week, reducing travel lanes and creating new traffic patterns. On Tuesday, crews will shut down the eastbound outer loop of Interstate 695 between Quarantine Road (Exit 1) and Route 10 at 8 p.m. so they can place a barrier wall between the two lanes to allow two-way traffic. On Jan. 7, the inner loop will be closed down.

IF YOU HAVE occasion to use the Washington beltway -- especially the southern portion where it crosses the Potomac River to Alexandria, Va., you're about to be taken for a very expensive ride that will make commutes worse, not better.Officials from Virginia and the District of Columbia pulled a dirty trick on commuters and frequent beltway travelers. While voting to replace the deteriorating Woodrow Wilson Bridge, the regional panel endorsed a traffic-stopping drawbridge and likely will require cars to stop and pay a toll.

Parts of the Beltway will be closed during the next three months as the Maryland Transportation Authority repairs a faulty drawbridge over Curtis Creek in Southeast Baltimore, forcing some motorists to make lengthy detours to reach the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Lane closings in connection with the project will start Monday, but a more extensive shutdown will come Jan. 9 when the entire Outer Loop will be closed in the vicinity of the bridge for about five weeks. Traffic will run in two directions on the Inner Loop.

Community activists fighting the replacement of the Severn River Bridge with an 80-foot-high span have blanketed downtown Annapolis with fliers urging residents to rally on the crumbling drawbridge March 29.Citizens for a Severn Scenic River Bridge have organized a protest for 2 p.m., starting at the now-defunct Spinnakers restaurant on the north end of the drawbridge.

Parts of the Beltway will be closed during the next three months as the Maryland Transportation Authority repairs a faulty drawbridge over Curtis Creek in Southeast Baltimore, forcing some motorists to make lengthy detours to reach the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Lane closings in connection with the project will start Monday, but a more extensive shutdown will come Jan. 9 when the entire Outer Loop will be closed in the vicinity of the bridge for about five weeks. Traffic will run in two directions on the Inner Loop.

A Federal Highway Administration official says the state will lose $32 million in federal aid if it redesigns a replacement bridge acrossthe lower Severn River to suit residents who want a new drawbridge.The FHA has agreed to finance 80 percent of a $40 million bridge with which the state plans to replace the Route 450 drawbridge."If not constructed as presently designed, these discretionary funds will be returned (to the federal government)," said Porter Barrows administrator of FHA's Maryland Division.

Margaret A. Downs, who lived in East Baltimore for many years, died Thursday of cardiac arrest at the Salisbury Nursing Home.Graveside services for Mrs. Downs, who was 84 and moved to Salisbury in 1985, are at 12:45 this afternoon at the Oak Lawn Cemetery, 7225 Eastern Ave.The former Margaret A. Wittmer was a native of Baltimore. Her husband, John Murray Downs, who retired as operator of the Hanover Street drawbridge, died in 1970.She is survived by a daughter, Patricia Sewell of Salisbury, four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Just in time for a change in the seasons, the 70-year-old drawbridge over the Severn River has been replaced by a spanking new 80-foot-high arch of steel and concrete. Now open for traffic, the new $34 million span will offer a scenic approach to the U.S. Naval Academy and the state capital from Route 2.We have made no bones about our affection for the former drawbridge. On bright spring and autumn days in particular, it had something of a magic quality to motorists traversing the narrow stretch.

Opponents of an 80-foot-high span across the lower Severn River appealed to state transportation officials Tuesday night to pursue another design.Representatives from the State Highway Administration said construction on the span, which would replace the Route 450 drawbridge, could begin in 1992 and be completed two years later.The final design is nearly complete, with the state preparing to put the $40 million project out for contractors' bids.For 2 1/2 hours Tuesday, opponents asked highways Administrator Hal Kassoff to delay the project, even if it means losing $32 million in federal aid,and reopen public hearings on a decision made seven years ago.The opponents -- including County Councilwoman Maureen Lamb, Annapolis Alderman Dean Johnson and Joe Coale, president of Historic Annapolis Inc. --argued that the span, more than 50 feet higher than the existing drawbridge, would detract from the city's historic, small-town charm.

Developers are planning to significantly change the profile of Baltimore's waterfront by raising a second tower beside the new 31-story Marriott Baltimore Waterfront and building a drawbridge that would link the Inner Harbor to Fells Point. The plans unveiled yesterday by H&S Properties Development Corp. include five more buildings in the Inner Harbor East retail and hotel complex on President Street. One would be a 342-foot-tall office building that would rise like a twin tower beside the Marriott.

Because of unexpected work on a repair project that was to have been done this month, the Peninsula Expressway drawbridge over Bear Creek in Dundalk will remain closed until late November, state officials say.The bridge replacement and rehabilitation project began in November, but state highway officials said supporting towers of the drawbridge -- which hold the gears, motors and other mechanical components -- were in surprisingly poor condition.If left unrepaired, the towers could have caused mechanical failure of the draw span, causing it to lock in place, said David Buck, spokesman for the Maryland Department of Transportation's State Highway Administration.

The bridge is stuck! Residents of Riviera Beach and the small waterfront communities that hug the shores of the Patapsco River in northern Anne Arundel County say they hear that way too often.The 52-year-old Stoney Creek drawbridge -- which goes up for boats and often doesn't come down for cars -- is a touchy topic, the mere mention of which can move perfectly normal people to eye-bulging, vein-popping, blood pressure-boosting diatribes.It's not the daily traffic delays on the two-lane structure connecting the north and south sides of Fort Smallwood Road that bother residents.

It is, quite literally, an Annapolis rite of passage. Not to mention a ritual frustration for residents of the nation's self-proclaimed sailing capital.The Eastport Bridge, a two-lane landmark linking the city's prime tourist area with a peninsula of Cape Cod-style cottages and waterfront condominiums, has started its seasonal rise and fall to allow sailors passage from harbor slip to Chesapeake Bay for evening regattas. And in water-carved Annapolis, boats more often than not have the right of way over just about anything else.

Bermuda can be a puzzle. For more than 350 years the linked island chain has been under one flag, yet its history records major social and political diversity -- not so much between neighbors but between its geographic end points.They say your attitude begins to change as you travel east and cross the world's smallest drawbridge (22 inches wide, just enough to permit passage of a sailboat mast) between Somerset Island and Southampton Parish. As for residents, although East Enders and West Enders occasionally rub shoulders in central Hamilton, only taxi drivers appear to make the tip-to-tip journey very often.

IF YOU HAVE occasion to use the Washington beltway -- especially the southern portion where it crosses the Potomac River to Alexandria, Va., you're about to be taken for a very expensive ride that will make commutes worse, not better.Officials from Virginia and the District of Columbia pulled a dirty trick on commuters and frequent beltway travelers. While voting to replace the deteriorating Woodrow Wilson Bridge, the regional panel endorsed a traffic-stopping drawbridge and likely will require cars to stop and pay a toll.

Ten Reasons Not to Build the Proposed Severn River Bridge:10) Maryland Functional Math Test Scores will go down, since many young Annapolitans learn to count while watching the masts roll by.9) Hey -- fishing should be a spectator sport.8) The drawbridge provides busy people a chance to catch up on their latest hate letters from Governor Schaefer.7) Gridlock really is God's way of bringing people closer together.6) Your business is failing and you're in no big hurry to get to work anyway.

EASTON -- Tucked away in the back of the National Trust's Historic Preservation magazine among historic houses for sale, a piece of Maryland's history also is on the market: the bridge to Tilghman Island.If it's not exactly the Neiman-Marcus one-of-a-kind Christmas gift, it's close enough. Who would buy a "heel trunnion rolling lift bridge with a counterweight above the roadway, built in 1934"?So far, no one.But the State Highway Administration, which placed the ad, as well as others elsewhere, hasn't given up on selling the steel bridge that carries cars and trucks on Route 33 across Knapps Narrows.

Just in time for a change in the seasons, the 70-year-old drawbridge over the Severn River has been replaced by a spanking new 80-foot-high arch of steel and concrete. Now open for traffic, the new $34 million span will offer a scenic approach to the U.S. Naval Academy and the state capital from Route 2.We have made no bones about our affection for the former drawbridge. On bright spring and autumn days in particular, it had something of a magic quality to motorists traversing the narrow stretch.