Highway Construction

Maryland's program of highway construction over the past 50 years has contributed to the sprawl development that stretches into the state's suburbs, according to a report from an environmental lobbying group. Although land-use planners have long said that new highways lead to new development, the report released yesterday by the Maryland Public Interest Research Group (MaryPIRG) is the first to document the effect in the state, said Dru Schmidt-Perkins, executive director of 1000 Friends of Maryland.

When it comes to higher gas taxes, most Maryland businesses agree on one thing: They want a guarantee that the money designated for highway revenues will go to roads and bridges. But when the rubber met the road in the Maryland House of Delegates, some major business organizations gave away the key to the lockbox. The Maryland business community has been deeply divided on a gas tax increase. Paving contractors, concrete and asphalt companies, engineering firms and other businesses that depend on highway construction have been starving for lack of state transportation funds.

Martin Marietta Materials Inc.'s initial public offering was a hit on Wall Street yesterday, selling out and ending the day up 7 percent in price.The producer of construction aggregates -- principally crushed stones used in highway construction -- had offered 7.65 million shares at $23 each through an underwriting team headed by Morgan Stanley & Co. The company had originally expected to sell its shares at $21, according to reports filed with the Securities and...

Harry Ratrie Jr., a World War II and Korean War veteran who became a leading businessman in Maryland's highway construction industry, died Dec. 8 of a heart attack at a hospital in Naples, Fla. The longtime Baltimore County resident, who moved to Florida in his later years, was 90. Mr. Ratrie was the retired founder, CEO and board chairman of Bryn Awel Corp., an asphalt paving and highway construction firm and the parent company of smaller construction,...

When it comes to higher gas taxes, most Maryland businesses agree on one thing: They want a guarantee that the money designated for highway revenues will go to roads and bridges. But when the rubber met the road in the Maryland House of Delegates, some major business organizations gave away the key to the lockbox. The Maryland business community has been deeply divided on a gas tax increase. Paving contractors, concrete and asphalt companies, engineering firms and other businesses that depend on highway construction have been starving for lack of state transportation funds.

Station an armed police officer at major highway work sites. Is that a way to keep apathetic road crews on their toes?If that's not the reason state troopers -- and marked state police cruisers -- can be found at most highway construction projects, then what is? Robert Schwartz of Owings Mills wants Intrepid Commuter to find out."One weekend I passed two highway construction projects along I-695 [that had police cruisers] with their overhead lights on," Mr. Schwartz says. "Couldn't we simply buy some flashing lights for the highway maintenance trucks so people will think a state trooper is there?"

Harry Ratrie Jr., a World War II and Korean War veteran who became a leading businessman in Maryland's highway construction industry, died Dec. 8 of a heart attack at a hospital in Naples, Fla. The longtime Baltimore County resident, who moved to Florida in his later years, was 90. Mr. Ratrie was the retired founder, CEO and board chairman of Bryn Awel Corp., an asphalt paving and highway construction firm and the parent company of smaller construction,...

According to a recent newspaper article that I carefully clipped out and then lost but remember the gist of, traffic gridlock in the United States is very bad. It's getting to the point where many commuters arrive at work, use the bathroom, then immediately begin commuting home. Fact: The average American commuter whose car radio is tuned to a "Classic Rock" station spends more time singing along to the Kiss song "Rock And Roll All Nite" than talking with his or her spouse. Fact: I made the preceding fact up, but for all we know it could be true.

Dump trucks -- more than a hundred of them -- were lined up on the wet grass field at Bowie Race Track yesterday along with dozens of giant backhoes, tractors and graders.Everything needed to rebuild war-torn Kuwait was there, but the army of construction equipment had little to do with hard times in the Persian Gulf country. It was primarily a sign of poor economic times in Maryland.The equipment -- about 1,100 different items -- was being sold at auction primarily because of a sharp cutback in commercial real estate development and a freeze on state highway construction that have put a financial pinch on construction companies around the state.

The Maryland Senate has narrowly passed a bill that would raise money for highway projects by boosting the fees for driver's licenses, titles and tags.The measure, however, faces a likely roadblock in the House of Delegates, where a committee earlier killed a similar bill.The bill, which the Senate passed 26-21 yesterday, would bring in $42 million a year by raising five dozen fees charged by the state Motor Vehicle Administration. Some of the fees have not been increased in decades.Without a revenue increase, Senate supporters argued, the state will lose federal funds for interstate highway construction and fall further behind in its building schedule.

MUCH ATTENTION was paid last week to the environmental risks posed by the Intercounty Connector as symbolized by an imperiled centuries-old tulip poplar. And while the federal EPA's criticism of the proposed 18-mile highway across Montgomery County was surprising (so much for the governor's highly touted environmental mitigations), there's a bigger obstacle in the ICC's path: its $2.4 billion cost. More precisely, it's the growing concern among legislators that the administration's creative financing plan is putting Maryland out on a limb.

SPRING AND summer are prime time for construction on Maryland's highways and byways. For those not paying attention to obscure news releases, I'm happy to announce that this is National Work Zone Awareness Week. Nationwide, 1,181 people died in crashes in and around road construction zones in 2002 (the most recent year for which statistics are available). Of those deaths, 1,029 involved motor vehicle crashes. Perhaps the most eye-opening statistic is that four out of five people killed in work zones are not the workers - they are drivers and passengers, according to the American Traffic Safety Services Association.

WASHINGTON - No more than a few of the nation's governors showed up here the other day when some experts on bioterrorism were called in to brief the National Governors Association's winter meeting about the threat the country faces. The governors had just finished a morning session at which they discussed more manageable things. They were about to have lunch and then go over to the White House to confer with President Bush on such critical matters as their need for more federal aid for highway construction, which they felt his budget was short-changing.

Maryland's program of highway construction over the past 50 years has contributed to the sprawl development that stretches into the state's suburbs, according to a report from an environmental lobbying group. Although land-use planners have long said that new highways lead to new development, the report released yesterday by the Maryland Public Interest Research Group (MaryPIRG) is the first to document the effect in the state, said Dru Schmidt-Perkins, executive director of 1000 Friends of Maryland.

According to a recent newspaper article that I carefully clipped out and then lost but remember the gist of, traffic gridlock in the United States is very bad. It's getting to the point where many commuters arrive at work, use the bathroom, then immediately begin commuting home. Fact: The average American commuter whose car radio is tuned to a "Classic Rock" station spends more time singing along to the Kiss song "Rock And Roll All Nite" than talking with his or her spouse. Fact: I made the preceding fact up, but for all we know it could be true.

SALISBURY -- Residents of one of Salisbury's oldest African-American communities joined state and federal highway officials yesterday to complete an agreement that ends a federal court challenge and clears the way for construction of the final leg of state projects aimed at speeding traffic to Eastern Shore beaches. Eight years after they first learned of a planned U.S. 50 bypass through their neighborhood, residents of the Jersey Heights neighborhood say they have broken a pattern of discrimination that began more than a half-century ago. Yesterday, they praised the agreement, noting it was the first time they've been allowed at the negotiating table.

Utility deregulation and highway construction might appear to be purely checkbook issues at first glance, but they carry hidden environmental costs, state conservationists warned at their fifth annual environmental legislative summit in Annapolis yesterday.Environmentalists from more than a dozen groups vowed to fight electric utility deregulation and a proposal to raise taxes to pay for new roads this year -- unless the measures include safeguards to prevent Maryland's high levels of air pollution from increasing further.

ANNAPOLIS -- Amid the gloom of state budget woes, Gov. William Donald Schaefer yesterday proposed an economic jump-start of sorts, unveiling a plan to speed up highway construction projects by borrowing money from the federal government.But the governor cautioned that a 5-cent increase in the state's 18.5-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax is needed to meet Maryland's transportation needs -- although he stopped short of formally proposing the tax increase himself.Instead, Governor Schaefer said a nickel-a-gallon tax increase phased in over three years -- 1 cent this first year and 2 cents in the following two years -- is "merely a suggestion" to the General Assembly, which rejected his proposed 5 percent sales tax on gasoline early in 1991.

Utility deregulation and highway construction might appear to be purely checkbook issues at first glance, but they carry hidden environmental costs, state conservationists warned at their fifth annual environmental legislative summit in Annapolis yesterday.Environmentalists from more than a dozen groups vowed to fight electric utility deregulation and a proposal to raise taxes to pay for new roads this year -- unless the measures include safeguards to prevent Maryland's high levels of air pollution from increasing further.

Station an armed police officer at major highway work sites. Is that a way to keep apathetic road crews on their toes?If that's not the reason state troopers -- and marked state police cruisers -- can be found at most highway construction projects, then what is? Robert Schwartz of Owings Mills wants Intrepid Commuter to find out."One weekend I passed two highway construction projects along I-695 [that had police cruisers] with their overhead lights on," Mr. Schwartz says. "Couldn't we simply buy some flashing lights for the highway maintenance trucks so people will think a state trooper is there?"