Gridlock

Investigating a tip that terrorists planned to blow up one of two tunnels running beneath Baltimore's harbor, authorities temporarily shut down Interstate 95 - the East Coast's major north-south artery - yesterday to aid the search for suspects. The threat, described by federal officials as specific but unsubstantiated, claimed that an Egyptian man living in the Baltimore area was plotting to drive a bomb-laden vehicle into one of the tunnels and detonate the explosives. At least six Egyptian terrorists planned to smuggle the explosives into the Port of Baltimore by ship, according to a tipster.

GREENBELT -- Advocates and opponents of a proposed highway linking Montgomery and Prince George's counties clashed last night at the first of four hearings on the project, with supporters praising it as a job-creating antidote to gridlock and foes condemning it as a money-wasting contributor to sprawl. The hearing in Prince George's, which drew about 200 people, was the first since the Maryland Department of Transportation released its draft environmental impact statement on the Intercounty Connector -- Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s top transportation priority -- in November.

WELL, NOW WE know what happens if you call a special session of the General Assembly without an agreement over the particulars: You get chaos. Three plans to address Maryland's skyrocketing medical malpractice insurance rates floated around Annapolis at various times yesterday -- the governor's, the Senate president's and the House speaker's. How do they differ? We couldn't have put it better than the physicians' lobbyist who called the governor's plan medium on tort reform but underfunded, the Senate's as light on tort reform but well-financed, and the House plan as good on both fronts.

Baltimore city fire crews responded to a fire at the Tex-Mex Grill at 201 E. Pratt Street late today, creating major traffic delays on Pratt and Light streets during the afternoon rush-hour. The fire department responded to the blaze about 3:15 this afternoon and doused the fire within 20 minutes, officials said. Four engines, two trucks and two battalion chiefs riding in two other vehicles responded to the scene. A city fire department spokeswoman said it is standard practice to send that amount of equipment for any incident reported in the Inner Harbor area.

Invest in roads and mass transit to cut gridlock Sun reporter Stephen Kiehl's article "Time traveling: Md. ranks No. 2" (Feb. 26) told us what we already knew: Maryland drivers waste far too much time stuck in traffic. Only New Yorkers have a longer commute to work than Maryland motorists, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. State officials blame longer commutes on jobs shifting away from downtown Baltimore. But what about people who commute to and through the city? They're stuck too. The bottom line is that gridlock is a condition created by bad planning and projects that were never built.

CHICAGO - Back in the mid-1960s, the nation was mired in a war with no end in sight, our leaders were creating entitlements with reckless abandon and critics were accusing the president of deceiving the public. Today, the Army says it may keep troops in Iraq through 2006, the price of the new Medicare drug benefit is already soaring and the administration is trying to explain all the things it said about Saddam Hussein that weren't true. It's no accident that the era of Lyndon Johnson, a liberal Democrat, parallels that of George W. Bush, a conservative Republican.

MEXICAN PRESIDENT Vicente Fox's administration is at an impasse. A congressional defeat last month of his party's plan to raise taxes to bail out the cash-strapped government means there will almost certainly be no tax, energy, labor or political reform during the remainder of his term. The economy's mediocre performance during the first half of his term and the modest estimates for the second half mean Mexico will not absorb its ballooning jobs deficit. In fact, Mr. Fox's only major achievement may lie in immigration reform - if President Bush's ambitious but fuzzy proposal legalizes millions of Mexicans in the United States.

THE ADMINISTRATION of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. is seriously exploring the idea of special toll lanes on the Washington and Baltimore beltways that could let Cadillacs and BMWs speed toward dinner at Morton's while the rest of us rot in gridlock. I say: Bring it on. "Congestion pricing," economists call it - paying extra to drive on high-demand routes at high-demand times. It's used in Singapore, London, Houston and Southern California. It may be the future of urban commuting. It certainly is worth a try in this neighborhood, one of the world's traffic-clot showpieces.

Douglas T. Lucas was shouting one morning last week over the blam-blam-blam of a jackhammer that was smashing East Redwood Street to bits behind a row of orange barrels that form a barricade against heavy traffic on Calvert Street. "You've got my street blocked!" Lucas hollered at a man overseeing the work. "Your permit doesn't authorize you to shut this street down!" An enforcement officer for the Department of Public Works, Lucas is the city's first defense against a relentless army of construction crews whose work on buildings, sidewalks and buried pipes usually involves seizing large swaths of public right of way from frustrated drivers and pedestrians.

THE REMINDER last week that daily life can be cast back to the Gilded Age at the flick of a circuit breaker was sobering. But even that might not push lawmakers past their sluggish, top-heavy approach to the nation's energy policy. Take the ponderous bills that House and Senate committees have debated over the past few years and are to start cobbling together next month - please. Congress doesn't need to reach consensus on the merits of fuel-efficient cars or drilling in Alaska before agreeing that the nation's creaky transmission connectors need fixing.