Signal

Claiming that the nation's conversion to digital television may be in danger, Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. said yesterday that it has filed a petition calling on federal regulators to adopt a new technical standard for digital broadcasting.The petition marks the latest round in Sinclair's battle to change the way digital television is developed in the United States. The Cockeysville-based company has waged an aggressive public relations campaign, inviting broadcasting executives from around the country to Baltimore to lobby them.

The next time you're sitting at the traffic light at Falls Road and Northern Parkway, stealing a quick moment to scan newspaper headlines, tune the radio, adjust a necktie or run a comb through your hair, you can thank Baltimorean Charles Adler Jr., who invented the traffic-actuated signal and installed it at the intersection in 1928.Adler, a prolific inventor throughout his long life, invented the sound-operated light because, "I was tired of being stopped by timed signals for no reason at all," he told The Evening Sun in a 1977 interview.

TOM REYNOLDS CALLED Intrepid last week to blow off steam about his morning commute.His route is Cold Spring Lane, where he turns south onto Grand View Avenue in an attempt to cut through to lovely Hampden, hon.And that's the catch."

A new traffic signal at Ten Oaks Road and Route 32 in western Howard County will be activated at 10 a.m. today, according to officials of the State Highway Administration.The signal, which has been on a "flash" mode since last week, was installed last month.After Tricia Ann Rayeski, a 24-year-old special education teacher at Glenelg High School, died April 17 of massive internal injuries when her car was hit by a pickup truck at the intersection -- police said Rayeski failed to yield to approaching traffic -- community members collected almost 400 signatures on a petition asking for a signal there.

WASHINGTON -- After a 16-month investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board decided yesterday that the simplest of human failings caused last year's fatal collision between Amtrak and MARC trains in Silver Spring: An engineer forgot about a signal warning him to slow down.Eleven people were killed in the Feb. 16, 1996, accident, including MARC Engineer Richard Orr and two fellow crew members. The wreck occurred when Orr's eastbound commuter train rammed into a westbound Amtrak train around 5: 39 p.m.But while concluding that human error was the primary cause, the five-member board pointed to a broad and often complex set of safety issues that contributed to that night's events.

Sykesville Mayor Jonathan S. Herman is asking the state to reconsider an $80,000 temporary traffic signal at Springfield Avenue and Route 32, even though underground wiring worth thousands of dollars has been completed.Herman said a light will not alleviate hazards at the dangerous intersection. He noted that motorists southbound on Route 32 approach the intersection from a blind curve. A hill impedes visibility from a distance for traffic on Springfield Avenue.The mayor has suggested that the state make improvements to nearby Cooper Drive, which also intersects Route 32.A few weeks ago, town and state officials got out of their cars and stood at the intersection.

Sykesville Mayor Jonathan S. Herman is asking the state to reconsider an $80,000 temporary traffic signal at Springfield Avenue and Route 32, even though underground wiring worth thousands of dollars has been completed.Herman said a light will not alleviate hazards at the dangerous intersection. He noted that motorists southbound on Route 32 approach the intersection from a blind curve. A hill impedes visibility from a distance for traffic on Springfield Avenue.The mayor has suggested that the state make improvements to nearby Cooper Drive, which also intersects Route 32.A few weeks ago, town and state officials got out of their cars and stood at the intersection.

ROCKVILLE -- When Amtrak engineer Donald Noble rounded a bend on a snowy evening last February, he was shocked to see another train on the same track barreling toward him.Rather than slam on the brakes, Noble decided in that instant to try to drive his train through a crossover ahead and onto another track. But the maneuver didn't prevent the deaths of 11 people in the oncoming train."I thought their best chance would be if we could have a side-swipe instead of a head-on collision," Noble said yesterday as he told his story for the first time publicly.

You can see fall coming as surely as you can see a candle flame snuffed by the wind. At twilight, watch any grass field or woods where this summer's fireflies, nourished by a wet spring, rose in great numbers. Now their dwindling lights tell us autumn is on the way.Think of it as the lightning bugs' parting signal in a brief life of signals.Seven days on the planet between June and mid-August, that's about all the adult lightning bug has in temperate zones. Time for the males to rise from the ground at twilight or night, fly through the darkness flashing, looking for a mate.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- When the MARC commuter train slammed into Amtrak's Capitol Limited in a deadly spiral of fire and twisted steel, a dispatcher some 800 miles to the south witnessed the disaster in an antiseptic, futuristic fashion.Inside the operations center of CSX Transportation Inc., the dispatcher, like dozens of others in this large, circular and windowless room, wore a headset and sat behind two computer terminals, monitoring the movement of Baltimore-area trains on a 9-foot-tall screen, a multicolored patchwork of lines and numbers encircling the room.

12 nonprofits to share United Way crisis funds Twelve nonprofit groups will share in $244,408 from a United Way emergency fund launched Jan. 22 to help local charities cope with soaring demand because of the recession. Grants of $10,000 to $25,000 will provide food, rental assistance, shelter and other basic needs, the United Way of Central Maryland announced yesterday. An estimated 1,064 people will be served by recipients that include the Arundel House of Hope, the Domestic Violence Center of Howard County, Health Care for the Homeless, the Harford Community Action Agency and a St. Vincent de Paul program for homeless women and children in Baltimore called Sarah's Hope.

State highway crews will begin the first phase of upgrades to the Route 24 and I-95 intersection in Abingdon tomorrow as surveys and utility relocations get under way. The Maryland Transportation Authority is beginning a three-year, $38 million construction project for a 1.5-mile stretch of Route 24 from the I-95 ramp to Route 924. The improvements will add capacity, relieve congestion and make the four-lane highway that already handles about 65,000 vehicles...

Economic turmoil and yesterday's unprecedented international interest-rate reductions provide the harshest reminder yet that political borders are no shield against financial avalanches. The U.S. housing crisis has become the global credit crunch. With rare coordination, central bankers from Washington to London to Frankfurt, Germany, cut rates, pumped out money and signaled a willingness to cut again. Acting separately, they were unable to stop the damage. Acting together, they hoped to wield a big enough bailing bucket to make a difference and - just as important - signal competence and agreement.

Major collisions between trains are not an everyday event in this country, but when they do happen, the results can be calamitous. Over the last quarter-century, Maryland has suffered two particularly horrific crashes, in Silver Spring in 1996 and Chase in 1987, in which a combined 27 people lost their lives. After each of these disasters, the question was raised: Isn't there a safer way to control trains? It's a particularly vexing problem for the nation's increasingly congested 140,000 miles of rail lines, particularly on the approximately 25,000 miles where heavy freight trains share the rails with Amtrak and commuter trains.

More stations, playing different kinds of music, with better sound. HD Radio, offering all those features, sounded like a natural. But five years after its introduction, digital radio, even with all its technological bells and whistles, is still struggling to gain a foothold in the American marketplace. "We're where we'd like to be, but we'd like to make it go quicker," says Bob Struble, president and chief executive officer of Columbia-based Ibiquity Digital, which developed and licenses the HD Radio technology.

The crawl up Charles and the slog back down St. Paul could become a little more bearable thanks to a new high-tech traffic management center that will give Baltimore greater control over its stoplights. About 1,000 of the city's 1,300 signals are already linked to the center, where operators monitor busy intersections, adjust the timing of lights to move traffic around accidents or events, and reset faulty signals. Formally opening the $2.9 million facility yesterday, Mayor Sheila Dixon said the primary goal is to make it easier to get through the city, but less idle time in vehicles also means less money wasted on gas and less pollution in the air. "When I have meetings with businesses ... you would think they would talk about high taxes and a whole host of issues," Dixon said.

Four people, including an infant, died when their car collided with a truck during the morning rush hour yesterday on a stretch of Howard County highway that neighbors described as busy and dangerous. The victims included two adult women and an infant girl, all believed to be from Laurel. Also pronounced dead at the scene on U.S. 1 in Jessup was the car's driver, a man from out of state. A 4-year-old girl was flown to Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore, where she was in critical condition late yesterday.

Donald Gansauer of Canton tracks snow on radar maps: "I noticed the colors on the map stand for reflectivity measured in dBZ. Is reflectivity the amount of the signal being reflected back to the radar antenna? What is a dBZ?" It's complicated, but yes, reflectivity measures how well drops, flakes or ice reflect the signal, which depends on their number, size and shape. The dBZ (for decibels) scale measures relative signal intensity. Warmer colors, higher numbers indicate more wet or frozen stuff in the sky.

THE PROBLEM -- A flashing yellow light on Greenspring Avenue near Brooklandville seems to work erratically. THE BACKSTORY -- About six months ago, Baltimore County crews installed a flashing yellow light at Greenspring Avenue and Woodvalley Drive, just north of the Baltimore Beltway. Ira Geller was happy. "I thought the signal was there to warn northbound drivers that vehicles were exiting Woodvalley onto Greenspring Avenue," she wrote to Watchdog. "The light would be necessary because the Greenspring Avenue hill blocks oncoming motorists' view of Woodvalley Drive," she wrote.

THE PROBLEM -- A left-turn light on a traffic signal in Baltimore County didn't work for more than a year, according to a reader. THE BACKSTORY -- How long does it take Baltimore County to change a light bulb? More than a year, according to Karen Zale. About two hours, according to the county Department of Public Works. The Baltimore County resident wrote Watchdog on Nov. 7, complaining about an "unworking left arrow signal" from Old Court Road at Towne Center Place, which leads into a shopping center in Pikesville.