Metro Station

An ice age may be coming to Northwest Baltimore.A Pennsylvania-based development company has proposed building two indoor public ice-skating rinks beside the Reisterstown Plaza Metro station on Wabash Avenue, city and state officials announced yesterday.The $50 million project by LCOR Inc. on 20 acres of state land would also include 344 apartments, 125 senior housing units, and 55,000 square feet of offices and retail buildings that might include a drugstore, coffee shop, video store and bookstore.

HOWARD COUNTY residents can hop an additional daily bus from Columbia to the Silver Spring Metrorail station beginning today.It's part of a state effort to help those in Howard get to Washington, says Mass Transit Administration chief Ronald L. Freeland.The bus will leave Columbia at noon and arrive at the Silver Spring Metro station at 1: 05 p.m. It will depart from the Metro station for Columbia at 1: 10 p.m. The trip is an expansion of bus line No. 929, which offers Columbia commuters express trips to the Metro station, where riders can catch Metrorail's Red Line to Washington or Shady Grove.

There will not be a choral festival at Coppin State College on Sunday as stated in yesterday's Black History Month Calendar in LIVE. There will be a festival sponsored by the Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute and Cultural Center at 3 p.m. Feb. 22 at the Coppin campus, 2500 W. North Ave. Call 410-383-5585 or 410-625-3113.The Sun regrets the error.Baltimore honors its African-American heritage with a series of exciting and inspiring Black History Month events. From jazz concerts to African dance workshops, from soul food dinners to Senegalese art shows, all the events reflect rich traditions.

If you live in a suburb and work in another suburb, you can't get there from here.That simple fact of Maryland life was highlighted yesterday morning after Gov. Parris N. Glendening hopped an express bus from Gaithersburg to Bethesda that whisked him and two dozen passengers on a commuter lane past thousands of cars inching along Interstate 270.Although the major north-south artery is 12 lanes wide through the bulk of the county, it isn't enough to keep...

County residents have consistently opposed bringing public transportation from Baltimore into Carroll, but they might support expanding Carroll Transit, a bus system that operates 19 vans in the Westminster area.The concept came from a forum organized by state transportation planners in Westminster Friday. Many of the 30 participants viewed Carroll Transit, a private, nonprofit company that primarily serves the elderly and disabled, as the answer to public transportation needs."We should connect all major activity centers in all municipalities," said Janet Gregor, county transportation planner.

The planning and zoning commissions for Carroll County and the city of Westminster sat down last week to work out conflicting ideas for managing growth along the Route 140 corridor.Instead, they heard a proposal from Westminster Mayor Kenneth A. Yowan that might get at the heart of the problem -- reducing traffic on the burdened highway.Toward the end of the two-hour meeting Thursday night, Yowan asked the county planning commission for help getting bus service to the Owings Mills Metro station.

At the southwest corner of Baltimore and President streets, just north of the old Fish Market downtown, contractors are putting the finishing touches on Maryland's first architectural curiosity of the new year.Its main elements are eight pairs of white flagpoles that look like ships' masts, aligned with military precision. Four pairs support an undulating fabric canopy; all are connected with steel cables and gently arching beams. The whole creation has a vaguely anthropomorphic quality, like some big, beige armadillo with antennae, lumbering over the landscape.

PROPOSALS TO extend metropolitan bus service from Baltimore County into Carroll County have met with frequent local rebuff. Economics, concerns about urban ills coming to Carroll and dubious convenience have been the major stumbling blocks to expanding the state Mass Transit Administration system.But population growth in Carroll, especially of people who commute eastward for work, may be changing the needs for and perceptions of public bus service. An increasingly congested Route 140, the county's major east-west link with Baltimore, is also forcing a change of heart among weary motorists.

It's not a matter of being lazy, but Leo Burroughs Jr. wonders why anyone should walk five "county blocks" to get home when a Mass Transit Administration bus stop is less than a block away.That's Mr. Burroughs' dilemma. He lives on Downey Dale Drive in Randallstown, near the No. 77 bus line, is active in several city organizations and visits the downtown area after work at least three times a week.From downtown, he catches the Metro at the Charles Center or Lexington Market stop for a somewhat interesting trek home: the Metro to Mondawmin Mall, then a transfer to either the M1 or No. 28 MTA bus for the rest of the trip home, getting off the bus at Liberty Road and Courtleigh Drive, five blocks from his house.

Bus riders will get a chance to express their opinions this week on bus schedule changes proposed by the Mass Transit Administration.Four public hearings are scheduled to consider the plan that would go into effect Jan. 29. The proposed changes would expand bus service to some neighborhoods and reduce service to others.The MTA updates its schedule three times a year. Officials say the latest changes should please most commuters, since more service is being added than is being subtracted.The plan would eliminate the No.26 line from the Providence Road park-and-ride to the Lutherville light rail stop and would eliminate service after 7 p.m. on the No. 18 from the Cromwell Station light rail stop and Old Mill.

Nearly 30 years after the Social Security Administration opened its $92 million Metro West complex on Baltimore's west side, federal officials are planning to move 1,600 employees from there to an office building to be constructed near the Reisterstown Plaza Metro station in Northwest Baltimore. The state Board of Public Works is scheduled to consider Aug. 26 a request from the Maryland Department of Transportation to transfer an 11.3-acre parcel at 6100 Wabash Ave. to the U.S. General Services Administration in preparation for the proposed development.

With the National Transportation Safety Board taking over the investigation of Monday's fatal crash of two trains on the Washington Metro's Red Line, the federal investigation and the capital's transit system will open a new chapter in a long and contentious relationship. For more than a quarter-century, the NTSB has been a persistent critic of the management and operations of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Administration - the regional agency that operates the subway system.

Officials of the Washington Metro subway system said yesterday that they will open the parking lot of the Greenbelt station to passenger cars on Inauguration Day, reversing an earlier decision to reserve it for charter buses. Greenbelt, the northern terminus of the Metro Green Line, is the most convenient station for many travelers from the Baltimore area. The decision opens almost 3,400 spaces there to drivers who might want to use mass transit to get into Washington on Jan. 20 for the swearing-in of Barack Obama.

The Maryland Transit Administration will increase its light rail service to Hunt Valley as part of a series of bus and rail changes, agency Administrator Paul J. Wiedefeld said yesterday. Beginning Feb. 17, all light rail trains will continue past Timonium to the Hunt Valley station -- the system's northern terminus. Half of them now stop their run at Timonium. Wiedefeld said the change was being made to reduce the system's complexity, especially for riders returning from downtown events.

A big investment firm announces an expansion that includes two new office buildings and 1,400 jobs. Management at the mall, which has seen its ups and downs, promises a revamped shopping center. And developers are poised to build a "Main Street" surrounded by more restaurants, offices and homes - a true town center, they say, for a community more than a quarter-century in the making. Owings Mills, the government-prescribed nucleus for commercial and residential development in northwest Baltimore County, has been transformed from farmland into a home for thousands and, increasingly, into a workplace.

As subway operator Jimmy Hardnett approached the Owings Mills Metro station one blazing-hot day last week, he slowed the train to a lumbering 20 mph as it approached a section where trains can switch from one track to another. It's a crawl that's all too familiar to users of Baltimore's nearly 25-year-old subway system. But tomorrow at 8 p.m., the Maryland Transit Administration will close the subway's northernmost section for 16 days to replace that crossover - called an interlocking - and make other improvements to the Owings Mills station.

For two cities so close whose fortunes are so entwined, Baltimore and Washington have an abysmal lack of transit connections. Greyhound runs a comprehensive schedule but is a bit pricey for regular commuter use at $12 one way. Its Baltimore station is stuck in an industrial district far from the light rail or subway. The MARC train costs $7 between Baltimore and Washington (with discounts for regular users) but runs a restricted schedule -- especially on the Camden Line -- with no weekend service.

THE PROBLEM -- There's an urban legend that years ago a Baltimore police officer once dragged a dead horse off Auchentoroly Terrace because he couldn't spell the name of the street for his report. He moved the carcass to a street with a simpler name and listed that site instead. At least he cared that he got it right for his report. Government officials of today can't always spell Charles Street correctly, and someone somewhere decided that the lane called "Cold Spring" should be compacted into one word.

The Cordish Co. has won city approval to build a 34-story residential tower atop an underground Metro station in downtown Baltimore on the former site of the Port Discovery HiFlyer balloon, the city's economic development agency said yesterday. The $70 million proposal - one of two alternatives the developer submitted for the city-owned site at President and East Baltimore streets - will include a mixed-use development of up to 250 condominiums and apartments, street-level entertainment-oriented retailers and parking.

A 34-story residential tower would rise atop an underground Metro station in downtown Baltimore under a proposal to redevelop the former site of the defunct Port Discovery HiFlyer balloon, the city's economic development agency said yesterday. The Baltimore Development Corp. is considering the proposal from Baltimore-based developer Cordish Co. for a $70 million, mixed-use development with up to 250 condominiums and apartments, a street-level entertainment-oriented retailer and parking.