Maryland Transportation

Drivers who regularly avoid paying tolls on Maryland's roads, tunnels and bridges face a new challenge in the effort to beat the system: technology that captures their license plate numbers and alerts police to their violations. The Maryland Transportation Authority announced this week that it has stepped up its enforcement of toll violations by implementing the new system - known as LPR, for License Plate Recognition. The system is intended to crack down on chronic toll violators - such as drivers who use E-ZPass lanes without having the required transponders and accounts.

Maryland Transportation Secretary John D. Porcari said yesterday that he plans to scuttle an agreement under which the Ehrlich administration promised take-home police vehicles for each of the 448 uniformed members of the Maryland Transportation Authority Police. Porcari said he had only recently learned about the agreement, which calls for the state to provide cars to the officers in exchange for their union's dropping its efforts to achieve collective bargaining rights. "As of today, we are not going forward with this program," Porcari said.

Two-way traffic on the westbound span of the Bay Bridge does not appear to have been a factor in causing the seven-vehicle crash that killed three Eastern Shore residents Thursday, a top police official said yesterday. Marcus L. Brown, chief of the Maryland Transportation Authority Police, said at a news conference yesterday that it might take two months to complete the investigation of the devastating chain-reaction accident -- set off when a trailer came unhitched from the sport utility vehicle that was pulling it. Yesterday, police identified the those killed in the crash as Randall R. Orff, 47, and his son, Jonathan R. Orff, 19, both of Millington in Kent County, and James H. Ingle, 44, of Preston in Caroline County.

Maryland Transportation Authority police were searching yesterday for a 79-year-old man who left his wife at Baltimore-Washington International Airport on Monday while he went to rent a car.Harley Freemont Burden Jr. of Freemont, Ind., and his wife flew into Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia shortly after 7 p.m., said Cpl. Gregory Prioleau, spokesman for transportation authority police. The couple's Northwest Airlines flight had been diverted from BWI. They had planned to attend the wedding of their son, Ken Burden of Silver Spring, this weekend.

Weekend repairs on a cracked bridge expansion joint on Interstate 95 at Caton Avenue are to continue today, closing three northbound lanes for a project that produced a half-hour traffic backup yesterday.The work caused the worst backup of three construction projects -- two of them on I-95 -- that produced driving woes yesterday, according to the Maryland Transportation Authority and state police.A one-day repaving job on I-95 near Route 216 in Howard County caused problems, and drivers using the Key Bridge on the Baltimore Beltway were detoured between exits 42 and 43 near Bethlehem Steel's Sparrows Point plant because of the demolition of a viaduct that is part of a road-widening project.

Lt. Col. Larry E. Harmel, the Maryland State Police's deputy superintendent and head of the Field Operations Bureau, will retire Aug. 1 after 31 years and become head of the Maryland Transportation Authority Police.In his work with the state police, Harmel, 52, has also commanded the state's Executive Protection Division and security operations at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. He joined the state police when he was 20.Harmel counts consolidation of the department's narcotics and criminal investigations units as among his most important achievements.

An 18-wheel truck smashed into the back of a stalled sedan on the Bay Bridge yesterday, pushed the car more than 100 feet and killing the driver and his two passengers, a mother and her 10-year-old son.The accident, which occurred at 9:32 a.m., forced police to close the bridge's westbound span for three hours. Police used eastbound lanes for two-way traffic until they cleared the scene of shattered glass and debris.According to the Maryland Transportation Authority, Michael Leslie Cager of Severna Park was westbound on the 4-mile-long Bay Bridge when the 1985 Ford LTD II he was driving lost power about a mile from the Eastern Shore.

SOME DOINGS are under way in cyberspace this month at the Maryland Transportation Authority, the agency that oversees the state's seven toll facilities and the roughly $121 million collected at the booths each year.Just surf on over to the agency's World Wide Web page for the latest information on (yawn) toll-taking in Maryland. Among the offerings on the Internet, the MdTA is providing "descriptions of toll facilities, current toll rates and facts about the authority's police force," according to a two-page release detailing this new venture.

A 61-year-old parking lot manager at Baltimore-Washington International Airport was shot late Saturday by a robber who then stole his company pickup truck.Robert Benyard of Randallstown was sitting in his APCOA Inc. blue 1992 Chevy S-10 pickup truck at a satellite parking lot cashier's booth at 11:59 p.m. Saturday when a man with a semiautomatic pistol emerged from the freezing darkness and demanded money.The robber opened fire, hitting Mr. Benyard in the groin and one arm with three bullets.

A Maryland Transportation Authority police officer suffered a head injury yesterday when he was knocked to the pavement by a man he was chasing from a stolen car at the Fort McHenry toll plaza, police said.Officer Charles Spinks, 30, was listed in fair and stable condition last night at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center.The suspect he was chasing, along with another man who had been in the stolen car, were both in custody last night pending criminal charges, police said.In a bizarre coincidence, both men later attempted to hang themselves in their respective cells at the Transportation Authority's Fort McHenry station lockup, police said.

Considerable uproar could be heard earlier this year when officials at the Maryland Transportation Authority announced that beginning in July, E-ZPass subscribers would for the first time be required to pay a $1.50 monthly fee on top of what they're already charged for tolls. Protesters made two predictions: first, that many people would drop Maryland E-ZPass accounts; and second, that the result would prove counterproductive as more people paid tolls manually, and the backups at Baltimore area tunnels, bridges and other MdTA facilities grew worse.

Getting the apology was the hardest part. As late as three weeks ago, two months after court records show the state of Maryland agreed to settle a lawsuit with money and words of contrition over the arrest of a musician accused of e-mailing a bomb threat to the airport, he was still in court fighting to get authorities to say they were sorry. A frustrated attorney representing the man complained in a court filing, argued before a judge July 1, that the state had failed to live up to its May 25 settlement agreement and that an attorney representing the state had told her "it would be a cold day in hell" before her client could have his "sought-after retraction and apology forwarded to anyone."

It was a day in late spring 2005 when I first met George Tarburton. The Maryland Transportation Authority police officer showed up without notice in the lobby of The Baltimore Sun. An editor asked me to go downstairs and talk with him. He was a thin, intense man with a lot on his mind. Tarburton, who was assigned to the detail that protects the port of Baltimore, was worried that the security at the marine terminals was riddled with holes that made it vulnerable to attack. He wanted to talk with somebody, anybody who could bring the problem to the attention of the public and the people who make decisions in this state.

President Barack Obama turned to Maryland for another high-level appointment Friday as the White House announced that he intends to name Maryland Transportation Secretary John D. Porcari to the No. 2 position in the U.S. Department of Transportation. In choosing Porcari, Obama has selected one of the few state transportation secretaries whose portfolio includes all the major modes of travel - highways, aviation, mass transit, maritime commerce and rail freight. If he clears the required background checks and is confirmed by the Senate, Porcari would serve as deputy to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a former Illinois congressman and a Republican.

Greedy borrowers, lenders not victims The remark by Dan Demeria, the owner of Potomac Heritage Homes, that any one of us could have been caught up in the mortgage crisis reflects the kind of ridiculous rationalization of greed and lack of simple financial common sense that we have seen from an alarming number of mortgage bankers and from greedy, spendthrift borrowers who now, absurdly, call themselves victims ("Short, sharp fall," Feb. 22). Where was their sense of personal responsibility?

Maryland transportation projects, already scheduled to absorb $1.1 billion in cuts over the next six years, will lose an added $1 billion because of slumping revenues, state officials said yesterday. The Maryland Department of Transportation delivered the bad news in the final version of its 2009-2014 capital spending plan. The cuts are even steeper than those projected in a draft last fall. State officials now predict a $350 million-per-year drop in money going to the Transportation Trust Fund.

Traffic backed up on the Capital Beltway starting about 3 a.m. Washington subway riders were packed together like Tokyo commuters. Lines at some stations forced would-be riders to wait for hours amid the crowds seeking to return home after witnessing the inauguration of President Barack Obama. But overall, the transportation system in the Washington region appeared to have passed with flying colors its biggest-ever stress test - moving more than 1 million people to the National Mall and inaugural parade route and getting them home.

Cheryl Sparks, the chief spokeswoman for the Maryland Transportation Authority, fights the same battle day after day after day. Who could blame her for turning to her favorite columnist for a little help? Sparks works for the agency that runs Maryland's toll facilities - the toll portion of Interstate 95, the Baltimore Harbor crossings, the Bay Bridge and a couple of other elderly bridges over the Susquehanna and the Potomac. Alas for her, a big part of Sparks' job description consists of explaining to folks that she doesn't work for the MTA. That acronym belongs to the Maryland Transit Administration, the agency that runs the Baltimore bus system, the light rail, the Metro subway (yes, Baltimore has one)

A checkpoint to examine truckers' identification is set to begin tomorrow for access to the Dundalk Marine Terminal, according to city transportation workers. To accommodate the checkpoint, the left lane of Keith Avenue will be closed from the bottom of the exit ramp off Interstate 95 southbound to Vail Street. The checkpoint, set to run from 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays, will enable Maryland Transportation Authority police to ensure truck drivers have identification cards. Truck drivers without cards will be directed to follow a detour to a lot on Broening Highway, where Maryland Transportation Authority Police will conduct a background check on drivers and issue temporary identification cards, according to city transportation officials.

The Maryland Transit Administration is proposing to eliminate six commuter bus routes, reduce the number of rides on others and cut back on its increasingly popular MARC train service as a result of severe revenue shortfalls, the O'Malley administration announced yesterday. Among the services the MTA plans to drop are routes between Baltimore and Columbia, and Laurel and Bel Air. Also on the chopping block are two commuter routes feeding into the Washington Metro system, one between Annapolis and New Carrollton, and the other between Waldorf and Suitland.