Median

A landscaping company employee from Baltimore County was killed and two co-workers were injured yesterday when a van ran onto the median of Ritchie Highway in Arnold, where they were pruning bushes, authorities said. Killed in the accident was Giovany Acosta, 24, of the 6900 block of Brookmill Road in Reisterstown. His cousin, Juan Carlos Acosta, 21, was in serious condition at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center, and Jose Wilfredo Hernandez, who lives with them, was admitted to North Arundel Hospital with minor injuries, police said.

Alcohol-impaired driver Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Paul A. Hackner convicted yesterday Earl Wayne Bowers, 45, of Stevensville of homicide while impaired by alcohol and of related traffic charges, prosecutors said. Killed in the Feb. 11 accident was Giovany Acosta, 24, of Reisterstown, one of three workers pruning bushes in the median of Ritchie Highway in Arnold. The other two were hurt. Police said a van, which police said Bowers was driving, plunged into the men. Bowers contended that he had a beer and sandwich just before the crash because, as a diabetic, he felt he needed something to stave off a blackout.

After decades of fighting, homeowners and businesses wedged into the Route 3 median in Gambrills are one step closer to a zoning change that would let them improve and sell their properties. The Anne Arundel County Council's approval this month of the Odenton Small Area Plan included a recommendation to change the zoning in the wide, oddly shaped median (about a mile long and 400 feet wide) from residential to commercial. The change is expected to be official in the spring, when the county undertakes its comprehensive rezoning initiative.

A Wisconsin woman was killed yesterday morning when a tractor-trailer in which she was riding veered across two lanes of Interstate 95 near Russell Street and slammed into a median, closing the highway's northbound lanes for three hours. The crash, which occurred shortly after 11 a.m., snarled traffic in the Baltimore area for hours, backing up drivers for seven miles on I-95 and five miles on Interstate 895, the Harbor Tunnel Thruway, well into the afternoon, police said. Kay L. Wistl, 51, of Pewaukee, Wisc.

Calling it dangerous and damaging, a handful of Elkridge community and business leaders rejected a plan yesterday to widen a one-mile stretch of U.S. 1, adding a center turn lane and a median strip between the Deep Run stream and Business Parkway.Officials from the State Highway Administration had hoped to gain the group's support before taking the idea to the rest of the community, but, when the meeting deteriorated into a heated argument, it was time to go back to the drawing board."We were hoping to reach a solution and go with this alternate, but we won't," said Bob Fisher, district engineer for SHA.That move was applauded by Kevin Doyle, vice president of the Greater Elkridge Community Association.

NEW YORK - The median direct compensation for chief executives who run 350 of the largest U.S. companies rose 6.9 percent to $7.04 million last year, the smallest increase in at least a decade, as the slowing economy curbed pay raises, according to a study of executive pay. Median annual pay for the CEOs - base pay and bonuses, excluding the grant value of long-term incentives - fell 2.8 percent to about $1.60 million last year, according to the study...

A collision involving a pickup truck that became airborne killed an 18-year-old Baltimore County woman and left a Woodbine man in serious condition late Wednesday afternoon on Interstate 70 west of Mount Airy, state police said.Andrea Kelly Simonson, of the 1000 block of Homberg Ave. in Middle River was pronounced dead at the scene. Police said the undercarriage of the 1987 Toyota pickup, driven by David Grant Hollinger, 31, of Woodbine, struck her 1998 Oldsmobile.State police said the truck was eastbound on I-70 and changing lanes when it collided with a Ford Crown Victoria driven by Joseph Grimes, 52, of Ellicott City, who was not injured.

The economy may be chugging along, but the gains are not trickling down to many American families' incomes and net worth. New government figures released yesterday show the median value of families' holdings barely budged from 2001 to 2004, rising just 1.5 percent, after registering double-digit gains for the previous six years. The median income edged up 1.6 percent, after adjusting for inflation, during those years, according to the Federal Reserve's 2004 Survey of Consumer Finances.

More than a decade ago, 4,000 loblolly pines were planted in the Route 100 median in Pasadena after it was damaged during construction work on Route 10. But a four-alarm brush fire in February burned several acres and many of those trees, prompting a county legislator and some Pasadena elementary school pupils to renew efforts to replace the trees. After the fire, Del. John R. Leopold, a District 31 Republican who lobbied for the reforestation of the median 11 years ago, asked the state Department of Transportation to survey the damage and develop a plan of action.

Three years after the State Highway Administration created Lake Median, a sediment pond in Gambrills filled with 3 million gallons of highly acidic water, the roads agency would like to undo its mistake.Ed Stein, assistant to the SHA's chief engineer, said the agency may neutralize the water with lime later this month, drain it into nearby Jabez Branch -- a rare and endangered trout stream -- and refill the 18-foot-deep pond with dirt left over from a recently completed road project in Annapolis.