Parkway

Traffic will be restricted through Aug. 29 along Bel Air South Parkway between Routes 24 and 924 in Bel Air while construction crews rebuild and improve it. Access to the Festival at Bel Air Shopping Center at Bel Air South Parkway will remain open during the roadwork.Motorists should be alert for changes in road patterns.

A request by the former owner of the Parkway Theatre for a new condemnation trial was denied Tuesday by Maryland's high court . A&E North LLC argued that the city should have paid to remove “automobile parts and other assorted junk” stored in the theater before the start of the 2010 condemnation trial. During the trial, jurors would tour the property to determine its fair market value and A&E “hoped the theater would show better without the junk” - thereby resulting in a larger “just compensation” award for the city's taking of the property.

JUDGING FROM the crowd at the old Parkway Theatre last weekend, it seemed as though every old moviehouse buff in Baltimore had called one another and started screaming, "The Parkway's opening." The 1915 theater, which closed in the late 1970s, was open last Saturday only as part of the "Gotta Have Art" event in the Station North Arts and Entertainment District. By the time I rolled in around 6 p.m., backlighted silhouettes of the visitors were clearly visible along the window overlooking North Avenue.

My commute to work is very simple, quick and efficient, a short drive to Broken Land Parkway (BLP) and then across Columbia to Snowden River Parkway (SRP). This is how our planned community road system was designed, with the parkways forming an efficient ring road joining residential areas to industrial and retail business areas. If the Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning and Public Works have their way it will change this parkway dramatically but not for the better. Their plan for a section of Snowden River Parkway from Broken Land Parkway to Oakland Mills Road will not address the bad congestion in this area but will allow some Guilford Industrial Park land owners who back onto Snowden River Parkway "direct access" to this very congested section.  DPZ and Public Works have been planning to change SRP into an Urban Boulevard for at least two years without input from land owners in the Guilford Industrial Park or the general public.

Howard Community College is modifying its entrance at Little Patuxent Parkway and Harpers Farm Road for traffic and safety reasons.The $299,638 capital project is "a reconstruction of the entrance road to the campus with an easing of a sharp curve for increased safety at the northwest corner of the student lot and a widening of roads for improved traffic," said Randy Bengfort, HCC spokesman.The project is expected to be completed by Thanksgiving Day.Until then, those who use the front entrance must detour to a second entrance farther east on Little Patuxent Parkway.

A 19-year-old Baltimore man was killed early yesterday and two other people were critically injured when their van hit a tree on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, U.S. Park Police reported.Police said the green Chevrolet Gladiator van was headed south at about 6: 30 a.m. when it left the road and crashed into a tree on the west side of the parkway just south of Route 175, said Park Police Lt. Jackie Burks.Rescuers from the Anne Arundel County fire department and Park Police freed the driver, Bridget Yolanda Wilson, 31, of Baltimore and her two passengers, Donovan Edward Brooks, 15, and Rafael Monroe Jones, 19, from the wreckage.

They're best known for fashion marts in Singapore, medical centers in Malaysia and residences in London. But officials of Singapore-based Parkway Holdings Limited see a bright horizon half a world away in Baltimore.As general partner and half-owner of two major projects -- a $600 million Inner Harbor community and a proposed $600 million medical trade mart near Camden Yards -- Parkway intends to play a major role in shaping the city's downtown."There's a lot of wealth . . . in this area," said Parkway Finance Director Tan Kai Seng.

The majorettes marched up the death lane in the bright sunshine yesterday.Stepping swiftly and suavely to the snap of snares, the Westsiders performed in the middle of Hilton Parkway to celebrate the renovation of Baltimore's most sinister stretch of asphalt.For decades, the 1.4-mile parkway between North and Edmondson avenues has been the city's most dangerous artery, the scene of more than 10 traffic deaths in the last 10 years.The road was so bad -- "Horrible, absolutely horrible," said one police officer -- that the city often simply closed it when it rained.

The Washington Nationals finally have an owner. Let the rivalry begin! Please? Orioles and Nats? Help us out. And make it better than the rivalries going on now: biggest nose dive in attendance, and most fan animosity about the ownership situation. The resolution of the almost-criminally mishandled Nationals power transfer couldn't have come at a better time, with both teams' turnstiles grinding to a halt. Maybe now, everybody can simply focus on making the products on the fields - at Camden Yards and RFK - better.

TO CONTINUE yesterday's theme of lack of perspective ... You heard it here first. Battle of the Beltways! That's right, get ready for a Parkway World Series. Hey, if George Steinbrenner can put the entire Yankees organization on public notice two weeks into the season, we're entitled to dream about October, aren't we? Right here, in the baseball capital of America, the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area, the one that could never, ever, in a million years, support two teams. Just to save you the trouble of turning to the standings inside, the Orioles are in first place in the AL East, thanks to the sweep of the Yankees at Camden Yards and the Blue Jays' loss in Texas yesterday.

Friday morning, drivers on the Outer Loop of I-695 were experiencing major delays at Perring Parkway (MD-41), where all three lanes were closed due to a crash involving four vehicles. Only one shoulder remained open. Use 95 as an alternate route. No delays in public transportation were being reported in the greater Baltimore area. Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and the Baltimore Development Corp. have selected the Maryland Film Festival's proposal for the renovation of the historic Parkway Theatre at 3 W. North Ave., according to an official who spoke Thursday morning at the BDC's monthly board meeting. The city hopes to enter into an exclusive negotiating agreement with the Film Festival shortly, said Darrell Doan, a BDC staffer who manages the corporation's real estate transactions. The Film Festival is partnering with the Maryland Institute College of Art and Johns Hopkins University on their proposal for the Parkway.

On paper, the plan for a car maintenance shop and a few stores on Snowden River Parkway in Columbia hardly seems worth fighting about. The business people opposing it, however, see it as an illegal first step toward drastic changes for the worse along some major roads, and a potential threat to businesses in Columbia's nine village centers.  "We just feel it was an illegal rezoning," says Christopher Alleva, president of the Howard County Independent...

The Baltimore-Washington Parkway reopened to traffic early Saturday morning, after the successful removal of segment of the West Nursery Road bridge overnight. The closures of the parkway, which is a major route to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, are part of an ongoing and sometimes troubled project to replace the bridges by rolling them down the highway and slotting them into position. Hurricane Sandy and construction mishaps had delayed the project, but the bridge over the northbound side of the parkway - also called Route 295 - was replaced last weekend.

After some trouble on the first attempt, the State Highway Administration removed the 300-ton West Nursery Road bridge over the northbound lanes of Baltimore-Washington Parkway overnight and reopened the road early Saturday. Crews used hydraulic equipment to lift the bridge deck out of place, after an attempt two weeks ago that failed when the load shifted and the Highway Administration had to assemble a massive crane on the parkway to lift the deck back into place. The parkway reopened at 7:30 a.m. after the bridge was carried several hundred feet north on the parkway, also called Route 295, and dropped off in the median.

The State Highway Administration plans to resume work on its "bridge on wheels" project this weekend after construction mishaps and the former Hurricane Sandy delayed the installation of two new spans on West Nursery Road over the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. The Anne Arundel County roadway is a crucial artery to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. This will be the second time workers will try to replace the aging West Nursery Road bridge over the parkway, or Route 295, by rolling in new, prefabricated bridge decks.

Starting today, motorists in the fast-growing Bestgate Road area will be able to zip from the road to Anne Arundel Medical Center and a U.S. 50 entrance ramp without navigating tangled traffic from a nearby mall. The 650-foot-long road brings hope for reduced driving times and lower blood pressure in the area near the medical center's new complex and Westfield Shoppingtown Annapolis, also known as Annapolis Mall. The new stretch of road between Bestgate and Jennifer roads is called Medical Parkway Phase II. Until today, the drivable section of Medical Parkway ran from Bestgate Road south to one side of Cowhide Branch, a meandering stream.

The decadelong overhaul of Baltimore-Washington Parkway should be finished in three years because of a speedup in federal funding announced yesterday.U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater said the Federal Highway Administration and the National Park Service will provide funds to finish rebuilding the Route 197 interchange, the remaining section of the project. The announcement was made at the interchange north of Greenbelt.Slater, who was joined by members of the Maryland congressional delegation and state officials, said the agencies' funding should save time and money on the reconstruction, which began in the late 1970s.

Hurricane Sandy's pending arrival forced the State Highway Administration to postpone this weekend's attempt to replace one of two spans over the Baltimore-Washington Parkway at West Nursery Road. The $6 million project calls for swapping out two 60-year-old bridges that carry traffic to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and its business district with two new spans that were built in the highway median. A massive multiwheel transporter has been assembled for the heavy lifting.