Route 100

AFTER SEVERAL delays, the 7.5-mile portion of Route 100 is open. At a cost of nearly $85 million, the artery provides a link between Interstate 97 in Anne Arundel County and Interstate 95 in Howard County, making the rapidly growing areas between Elkridge and Pasadena even more attractive to new residents and business.Completion of the full length of Route 100 is still three years off, but when the $170 million project is finished it will be an important beltway-like connector. By 2020, 86,500 commuters will travel on the road each day, state highway officials estimate.

IS A POTOMAC MILLS-SIZED regional shopping mall in the cards for a 1,000-acre site just south of Baltimore-Washington International Airport? Perhaps. But the mere fact that the Mills Corp., the Virginia-based developer of some of the world's largest discount malls, is exploring the possibility underscores the economic importance of Route 100.When that connector road is completed in another year, it will link the airport and business zone to Columbia and provide motorists easy access to such main arteries as the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and Interstate 95.The Mills Corp.

Motorists trying to get onto Route 103 from northbound U.S. 29 will become the first to drive on a long-awaited section of Route 100 next week, although they will be going the wrong way.Going the wrong way won't be any problem, however, as northbound motorists on 29 are currently squeezed together with southbound motorists on the southbound side of of the highway.The squeeze is necessary because northbound lanes are being relocated about 200 feet east in the area of the Route 100 interchange.

Call it Maryland's monument to the suburbs.When a major section of Route 100 is completed this fall, the long-awaited east-west connector will not touch Baltimore or Washington -- or even brush their beltways.Instead, the major highway will forge an uninterrupted link between the growing suburbs of Elkridge in Howard County and the Pasadena peninsula in Anne Arundel County.And when the final phase of construction is completed by 1999, the highway will provide a 21 1/2 -mile shortcut for thousands of commuters traveling between Mountain Road on the east and U.S. 29 on the west.

The county's main transportation goal remains mired in federal wetlands protections, but a key highway connecting Columbia to Clarksville has been freed from the state's fiscal rut, the state highway administrator told county officials last night.Highway Administrator Hal Kassoff spoke of the "sad story" of the Route 100 wetlands troubles during the state Transportation Department's annual presentation of long-term plans for the county.The good news, he said, is that Route 100, the county's top transportation priority, is under construction.

To motorists, the new concrete embankments along U.S. 29 near Route 103 in Ellicott City are signs of more construction and more traffic problems like those a few miles south at Broken Land Parkway.But to the county and state planners, developers and homeowners involved,they are the denouement of a 31-year struggle called Route 100.Workers last week set up a chain-link fence construction yard andplaced surveyor's stakes in the area in preparation for earth-movingand tree-clearing for the high-speed intersection.

Eager for the green flag, motorists yesterday raced onto a newly opened stretch of Route 100 -- its first morning rush hour. Gone were the dreaded Beltway traffic snarls and the stoplights on Route 32.Yet, as commuters raced east and west -- their dream of unimpeded and quick access between the Pasadena peninsula in Anne Arundel County and U.S. 29 in Howard finally realized -- some were forced to make pit stops.Within 90 minutes, Howard County police issued speeding tickets to 30 drivers just west of Interstate 95. Police said they were sending a message.

THE OPENING of Route 100 through Howard County completes a project that began with an idea first expressed more than 20 years ago. The two-decade lag from start to finish does not diminish the road's expected impact. Opening the highway's final leg should significantly reduce traffic on the county's most popular east-west thoroughfares -- Routes 32 and 175.Completion of all 21 miles of Route 100 allows motorists to travel from Ellicott City to Gibson Island in Anne Arundel County. In Howard, it gives commuters a quick connecting route between Interstate 95 and U.S. 29. That should reduce the number of drivers using the Baltimore Beltway to get between those two points.

Some unexpected construction glitches likely will delay the opening of the new Route 100 through eastern Howard County until late September, a stall of several weeks that highway officials say is of little consequence given that the project is already more than two decades in the making.State Highway Administration engineer Bob Fisher described the problems as minor. An old foundation for the road near Interstate 95 has deteriorated more than expected and must be repaved, and large sound barriers being erected near U.S. 29 are proving difficult to install.

Acting on two requests to rezone two parcels at the junction of Routes 100 and 103 for commercial use to allow for office towers, the county Zoning Board approved last night the request for one parcel and rejected the other. The board, which is composed of the five County Council members, unanimously approved Dr. Ahsan Kahn's request to rezone from residential to commercial a 17-acre lot at the northeastern corner of the junction. But it rejected by a 5-0 vote his request to make the same switch on a 4-acre lot at the southeastern corner of the intersection.