State Highway Administration

The State Highway Administration is lending reflective vests to children in costume and their chaperones on Halloween, Oct. 31, as part of the the annual Vests for Visibility program. The vests will be available, free of charge, at SHA maintenance facilities Monday through Wednesday, Oct. 29-31, from 8 a.m.-4 p.m.. They are available on a first-come, first-served basis and must be returned by Friday, Nov. 9. In Carroll County, the vests are available at the Westminster SHA Shop, 150 Wyndtryst Drive, Westminster (410-876-2061)

The Interstate 95 rest areas in Howard County are scheduled for temporary daytime closures beginning next week while crews repave the parking lots, the State Highway Administration said. On Monday, weather permitting, the southbound welcome center, including parking areas, will be shuttered for a week or two, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. When work is completed, the paving operation will switch to the northbound center. Both centers will be open around the clock, Friday through Sunday. Overnight truck parking will be permitted and the restrooms will reopen for the evening and overnight hours.

For more than 35 years, Robert Lambdin tried to keep Maryland's traffic from jamming, helping to figure out which highways to build and where.It was no easy job. As a senior forecaster for the State Highway Administration, Mr. Lambdin had to tell his bosses not just how many cars and trucks might use a given strip of road today, but how many might use the road 20 years from now.He was considered an expert at his job, the dean of traffic forecasters in...

Most weekday mornings, late spring through late summer, Terry Weller and George Foster climb into a bright yellow truck and fire up lasers, high-definition cameras and a bank of digital recorders before hitting the road. Weller and Foster are two of the state's pothole detectives. Their laboratory on wheels is a $1.3 million truthmobile from which asphalt cannot hide its faults. Cracks, bumps and ruts lose their anonymity to ARAN - the Automatic Road Analyzer - a tool that finds trouble before it finds motorists' front tires and suspensions.

An article in the Carroll County edition of The Sun yesterday should have said that County Commissioner Donald I. Dell attended a State Highway Administration meeting Tuesday night Eldersburg.The Sun regrets the error.Pub Date: 10/01/98

1 The State Highway Administration will be widening U.S. 1, between Route 175 and Meadowridge Road. This construction will occur over the next few years.

The Interstate 95 rest areas in Howard County are scheduled for temporary daytime closures beginning next week while crews repave the parking lots, the State Highway Administration said. On Monday, weather permitting, the southbound welcome center, including parking areas, will be shuttered for a week or two, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. When work is completed, the paving operation will switch to the northbound center. Both centers will be open around the clock, Friday through Sunday. Overnight truck parking will be permitted and the restrooms will reopen for the evening and overnight hours.

The State Highway Administration will hold a public hearing Tuesday to discuss the proposed Solomons Island Road widening project.The hearing will begin at 7 p.m. at Central Middle School, 221 Central Ave., Edgewater. The proposed project covers about one mile from Virginia Avenue to south of Pike Ridge Road.Requests to speak at the hearing should be submitted by tomorrow to Robert Schneider, Project Manager, Project Planning Division, State Highway Administration, 707 N. Calvert St., Baltimore 21202-0717.

POLICE* Hickory Ridge: At Route 29 near Brokenland Parkway: A Mac 10 semi-automatic pistol was found about 2 p.m. Thursday in the grass by State Highway Administration workers. The gun had a clip containing 27 bullets. Investigators are trying to determine where it came from.

Last week, Watchdog reported that the Exit 8A sign on the Baltimore Beltway inaccurately reported the distance to the Harbor Tunnel Thruway (Interstate 895). On Saturday, workers replaced the overhead sign with one showing the correct distance, according to Maryland State Highway Administration spokesman David Buck.

On a recent cold, gray morning, state bridge inspector Van Swift jumped into his office: a 4-by-3-foot white bucket at the end of a 60-foot hydraulic arm anchored to a flatbed "snooper" truck. Working a cluster of joysticks, he swung the bucket away from the truck and over the side of the 800-foot Interstate 70 bridge spanning the Patapsco River between Baltimore and Howard counties. As the bucket descended, the whoosh of highway traffic gave way to the rumble of tires overhead. Swift maneuvered the bucket toward a web of girders, beams and turnbuckles about 120 feet above the rushing water.

Gwen Darwin McDade, a retired architect who worked on the Johns Hopkins medical campus and later designed structures for the State Highway Administration, died of heart disease Saturday at his Glen Arm home. He was 87. Born in Verona, Pa., he was the son of a contractor and a secretary. The family lived in New Kensington, Pa. Mr. McDade joined the Army immediately after graduating from New Kensington High School. He was assigned to an infantry unit fighting in Belgium during World War II. Family members said he was injured as he was loading heavy- armament shell casings during the Battle of the Bulge.

The controversy over whether to change Maryland's three-year-old speed camera law arrived in Annapolis Tuesday, with some lawmakers calling for accountability and the State Highway Administration touting the value of its program. State Highway Administrator Melinda B. Peters said serious accidents in work zones have reached a 10-year low and only 2 percent of drivers are ticketed by the speed cameras. Peters told lawmakers it's necessary to have cameras operating in construction zones even when workers are not present — a practice some lawmakers have criticized — because the jersey barriers and irregular traffic patterns are a hazard.

Traffic in the Ruxton area of Baltimore County was disrupted on Thursday morning because of a water main problem, State Highway Administration officials said. SHA spokesman David Buck said that a water main problem along Old Court Road between Falls Road and Stone Mill Road forced the close of the westbound side of the road. Buck said that traffic is being alternated on the eastbound side. Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

The State Highway Administration is lending reflective vests to children in costume and their chaperones on Halloween, Oct. 31, as part of the the annual Vests for Visibility program. The vests will be available, free of charge, at SHA maintenance facilities Monday through Wednesday, Oct. 29-31, from 8 a.m.-4 p.m.. They are available on a first-come, first-served basis and must be returned by Friday, Nov. 9. In Carroll County, the vests are available at the Westminster SHA Shop, 150 Wyndtryst Drive, Westminster (410-876-2061)

Rollaway bridges: Take two. Crews will try again this weekend to replace the first of two bridges that span the Baltimore-Washington Parkway at Nursery Road — a gateway to the airport business district — by rolling the old bridge out and the new bridge in. Closures and detours will be in effect Friday night through Sunday morning. The State Highway Administration urges motorists to use alternate north-south routes, such as Interstates 95 and 97. The project will be postponed if heavy rain and high winds from a major storm approaching the area begin earlier than predicted, said Melinda Peters, SHA administrator.

The State Highway Administration has rescheduled the next meeting of a panel considering possible changes to Route 32 in western Howard County. Members will meet at 4 p.m. Feb. 5 in the Gateway Building, 6751 Columbia Gateway Drive, Columbia. Information: 410-545-8571.

An editorial on Thursday mistakenly identified a Lutherville community that has been denied sound barriers by the State Highway Administration. The community is Longford North, and it is located near Interstate 83.The Sun regrets the error.Pub Date: 7/18/98

The northbound lanes of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway at West Nursery Road have been reopened, the State Highway Administration reported Sunday morning. The section of the road, also known as MD 295, was closed early Saturday to allow the replacement of the West Nursery Road bridge deck over the northbound lanes. However, as crews placed the bridge deck on a specially designed piece of equipment that would wheel away the structure, the load shifted, scuttling the plan, the SHA said.

I read with interest your article about the innovative method that will be employed to install the new bridge at West Nursery Road and Baltimore-Washington Parkway over the weekends of Oct. 19 and Oct. 26 ("Rolling out better access to the airport - at 4 mph," Oct. 11). I applaud the State Highway Administration for choosing such a minimally disruptive means to replace an aging bridge. These weekends were chosen because there are no Ravens game scheduled. But who would have guessed that the Orioles could be hosting a World Series game Oct. 27?