Mountain Road

Joppa residents who have been complaining for some time about dangerous conditions on Mountain Road south of U.S. Route 1 may see a solution in the works by next spring.State highway officials say that a traffic light and left-turn lanes will be installed on Mountain Road (state Route 152) at Old Joppa.Charles Harrison, district engineer for the State Highway Administration, said a recent analysis of accident patterns and traffic volume in the area indicated that a traffic light is warranted.

The politicians are fighting over Mountain Road: Should Anne Arundel County spend money to widen it or to study building a bypass?Four state legislators have asked Anne Arundel County Executive John G. Gary to take $200,000 away from a planned study of a Mountain Road bypass and spend it, instead, to add a lane to the eastbound and westbound sides of Mountain Road between Route 100 and Lake Shore Drive.The legislators -- Republican Dels. John R. Leopold and Victoria L. Schade and Democratic Sen. Philip C. Jimeno and Del. Joan Cadden -- said they are lobbying for their proposal because they envision too many obstacles to the $12 million bypass project, a 2 1/2 -mile, two-lane parallel route linking Magothy Bridge Road to Mountain Road between South Carolina and Maryland avenues in Lake Shore.

A recommendation in a long-range transportation proposal to widen Mountain Road has renewed the concern of Pasadena residents and area politicians who for more than two decades have feared that expansion of the road would usher in unwanted growth. The final draft of the 2001 Baltimore Regional Transportation Plan, which was released this month, recommends widening the Pasadena peninsula road from its current three lanes -- one lane in each direction and a center reversible lane -- to five lanes by 2020.

It's a dead-end road with 28,000 cars a day jamming it so severely that the government imposed a freeze last year on construction of subdivisions for acres on either side of it.But on May 8 -- when the moratorium expires -- developers will again have the green light to send bulldozers roaring down Mountain Road and to build homes on the peninsula from Woods Road to Gibson Island.County Councilman Thomas Redmond said residents are so worried about gridlock that he will ask the council next Tuesday to extend the moratorium on subdivisions for a year.

ANOTHER SLEEPY week along the roadways of Pasadena. The latest talk in and around the Mountain Road area concerns the new rush-hour traffic patterns east of Route 100.Most neighbors applaud any improvement along this stretch of road. You can see it in their smiling faces as they go flying by at speeds heretofore unknown on Mountain Road. I guess it's the call of the open road at work.Many neighbors have expressed caution about the improvements. Wait until September, when everybody is back from vacation, they say. Others talk about the chilling thought of trying to make a left turn across not one, but two lanes of speeding traffic.

ROAD CREWS have been burning the midnight oil this week repaving the new lanes on which traffic flow reverses direction at designated times on Mountain Road. What a change. The tire-jarring, rutted roadway has been transformed into a sleek patch of open road with bright yellow lane lines.Driver response has been fantastic, especially along the section of Mountain Road where I live. Motorists speed by, as if not noticing the 40-mph speed limit.I call it the NASCAR syndrome. Give them a straight stretch and watch out, they're all going for the checkered flag.

In a scene all too familiar in Pasadena, 100 residents gathered in a firehouse hall Thursday to protest the building of 18 homes off Mountain Road.Four state delegates, two state senators, one county executive, a dozen county planning officials and three maps surrounded residents as they rose to argue that their peninsula cannot handle one more car, one more house or one more student.The residents blamed the county Planning Board for approving new homes, the Planning Board blamed the county executive for not funding the expansion of Mountain Road, the county executive blamed state lawmakers for not getting the state to fix the road, and the lawmakers blamed the county executive for not making the road the county's No. 1 priority.

More than 80 Pasadena residents last night turned a forum on how to relieve traffic on Mountain Road into a united stand against developers and the Anne Arundel County planners who issue permits to the builders."

Voices were raised and tempers flared as more than 700 Pasadena residents packed the auditorium of Chesapeake Senior High School for more than three hours Wednesday night to oppose a Mountain Road bypass.Nearly all the seats in the auditorium were filled, and many people were willing to stand to show their resistance to County Councilman Thomas W. Redmond's plan to build a 2 1/2 -mile bypass."It's wrong," said William L. Long. "You're taking people's homes. That's stupid.""It's a shame!" Ray Jacobs roared at Mr. Redmond.

The on-again, off-again plans to widen Mountain Road east of the Route 100 intersection are off again, state highway officials say, a victim of the state's nagging financial problems.And State Sen. Philip C. Jimeno is frustrated."If it drops to the bottom of the list again, it may never be funded," he complained. "Meanwhile, they're funding all these other projects."Mr. Jimeno voted for a gas tax increase during the 1987 General Assembly session after William K. Hellmann, then secretary of transportation, assured him part of the money would pay to widen the busy Mountain Road to five lanes from Route 100 to Maryland Avenue.