Route 30

Prepare to be really annoyed.For the 20,000 drivers a day who use Route 30 through Hampstead, the long drive will be longer than usual most of this week.Route 30 will be shut down at the northern rail crossing from 9 a.m. tomorrow until 3 p.m. Friday, according to the State Highway Administration.CSX Transportation will install a new rubberized crossing that should provide a smoother surface for vehicle traffic.It also will have a longer life than the current crossing."Hopefully, Monday will be the worst day," said Hampstead Police Chief Ken Russell, who said he thinks people will find alternate routes after one miserable rush hour.

Maryland Route 30 in Hampstead will be closed to through traffic from Aug. 23 to Aug. 27 so the CSX railroad crossing at the north end of town can be rebuilt."

The Town Council pushed city limits southward Monday, voting unanimously to annex 45 acres of industrially zoned land along Route 30.The vote came after a public hearing in which one person questioned the move. Council members, however, expressed no reservations.Developer Charles Harwood of Upperco had sought the annexation. He plans to build an industrial park after he buys 36 of the 45 acres from current owner Helen Hoffman.Three remaining lots on the newly annexed land are owned by Maurice Hampshire, Charles Bosley of Bosley Construction Co. and Grove Brothers Inc. construction.

State transportation authorities have told Hampstead officials that improvements to the two railroad crossings on Route 30 will be completed by the spring or summer of 1998.Since money already has been allocated for projects elsewhere, state Secretary of Transportation David L. Winstead wrote Hampstead Mayor Christopher M. Nevin last week to advise that construction on the new crossings by CSX railroad crews could not begin sooner than the fall of 1997.Mr. Nevin had requested last month that state officials help speed the project, originally scheduled to start in fiscal year 1998-1999.

HAMPSTEAD -- Struggling shopkeepers are angry that the town might allow yet another retail center to be built while existing space remains vacant.Several retailers attended the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting last week to protest the Oakmont commercial site, a shopping center planned for the north end of town on Route 30.One entire shopping center sits empty on Black Rock Road. Several storefronts at the new Roberts Field have yet to attract their first tenants, and five or six have been abandoned at North Carroll Plaza.

Maryland's transportation secretary told Carroll leaders yesterday that the state lacks the money to move forward on road projects that are designed to relieve congestion and improve highway safety in the county. The meeting in Westminster was Transportation Secretary Robert L. Flanagan's latest stop on a tour across Maryland to discuss the state's transportation needs and the $10.5 billion of highway work that has not been funded. It was also the third meeting with Carroll officials in as many weeks to talk about road projects considered important to the county, including the Route 30 bypass around Hampstead and improvements on Route 32 between Eldersburg and the Howard County line.

Maryland's latest fight between community activists and retail giant Wal-Mart is about to enter round one -- this time outside Hampstead.About 40 people are expected to attend a county Subdivision Advisory Committee meeting this morning to protest construction of the proposed discount giant store in North Carroll Shopping Plaza on Route 30 between Hampstead and Manchester.Formal plans for the 101,194-square-foot Wal-Mart will be unveiled during the public meeting, ending months of speculation over the use of the property, which was rezoned in November in anticipation of a "big box" retail development.

Two Pennsylvania men were injured - one of them critically - when a CSX train slammed into their pickup truck at an icy rail crossing on a private road north of Reisterstown yesterday morning. The train - made up of four locomotives headed from Hanover, Pa., to Baltimore - hit the truck broadside at 10:57 a.m., police said, and dragged it south about 30 feet to an embankment along Route 30. The truck's driver, Joshua Freeburn, 24, of the first block of Coffeytown Road in Dillsburg, Pa., was trapped in the vehicle and freed by Baltimore County firefighters, said Cpl. Vickie Ware- hime, county police spokeswoman.

At Manchester's monthly town meetings, Mayor Christopher B. D'Amario and the five council members rarely miss a chance to voice their desire for the state to build a bypass around the town, no matter how tangential to the matter at hand. So the mayor was "flabbergasted" when state Transportation Secretary Robert L. Flanagan recently asked whether the town was sticking to a position opposing a bypass. It seems that state highway officials' files contained what they considered the town's most recent official word on the issue - a no vote by the Manchester council more than two decades ago. Now, Manchester officials are taking steps to update their formal position on a bypass - and to be included in talks about state road projects for Carroll County.

The long-delayed Hampstead bypass, which would alleviate heavy traffic along Route 30, tops the list of $110 million in state road projects planned in Carroll the next six years, state highway officials said yesterday. Town and county officials lobbied hard yesterday during the annual meeting with the state Department of Transportation in Westminster to get the 5.8-mile road built soon. The $35 million bypass, a road the county has made its priority, generated the most comment during the two-hour session The bypass has been on the drawing board for 30 years, but it has yet to be designed.