Street Signs

The problem: Street lights and directional signs remain dark in West Baltimore. The back story: Harry E. Bennett Jr. regularly travels from his home in Sandtown-Winchester to Westview Park to go bowling. For months, he's been troubled by the dark street signs in his neighborhood. At two intersections, lights have been dim on two green overhead signs — like the kind you see on highways — that direct drivers around the "Highway to Nowhere. " The signs are located on North Fulton Street, guiding drivers onto westbound Franklin Street, and on westbound Mulberry Street, to North Monroe Street.

Everybody knows that Tom Booth loved his family and friends. He also loved doing business in Catonsville. Since its beginning, Tom was an active member of the Catonsville Chamber of Commerce. As a builder and developer for many years, Tom contributed to the Catonsville landscape. He was a good guy, a straight shooter and a kind soul. The street signage "Tom Booth Way" will permanently honor his memory and decades of accomplishments that helped make Catonsville a better place to live.

IT'S FUNNY how some people - myself included - can drive around for years, wondering why Howard County street signs are color-coded without trying to find the answer. Karen Gilbert isn't one of them. "The street signs in the Columbia area are different colors - some green, some brown, some blue," Gilbert said. "At the corner of Eden Brook and Guilford Road, the Guilford Road sign is green on one side of the street and blue on the other. What is the significance of the different colors?"

On Sept. 13, the Arbutus Business and Professional Association celebrated the completion of the Leeds Avenue repaving project and the beginning of the East Drive repaving project with County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, many elected officials and community leaders. I love Arbutus! It's full of hard working people, entrepreneurs and businesses. We have elected officials with their behind-the-scenes people who work tirelessly for us, and community associations who support us. We have an Ice Cream Cottage, town hall, lots of fun eateries and our very own neighborhood movie theater.

Responding to laments from frustrated motorists, Howard County public works officials gradually are replacing Columbia's distinctive - but hard-to-read - street signs with rectangular signs that have a more traditional design. The changes, which allow for larger print than the older, box-like signs, are in line with signage recommendations from a federal government manual and may be especially welcome for older drivers who complain about difficulty reading the current signs on the fly. "This was primarily done to get the letter-size larger, and the visibility is so much better," said Mark DeLuca, chief of the traffic engineering division of the Howard County Department of Public Works.

A Harford County teen-ager was arrested in connection with a three-hour rampage in a subdivision near Bel Air early yesterday, in which as many as 75 mailboxes and street signs were destroyed by a minivan, police said. The Bel Air teen was arrested at 3:10 a.m. and charged with driving while intoxicated and malicious destruction of property, said Lt. Edward Hopkins, spokesman for the Harford County sheriff's office. The 17-year-old, whose name was withheld because he is a juvenile, was charged with 35 counts of vandalism, Hopkins said.

Street signs marking Paradise Avenue in Mount Airy seem to fly off the posts. "Children at Play" is another favorite of the "collectors," who have been ripping off an average of two street signs a month in town.The thefts have made Town Councilman Norman C. Hammond so angry that he is offering a $15 reward for returned signs, no questions asked. The Town Council agreed last month to give $100 to anyone who provides the names of sign thieves and locations of stolen signs.In the year since Hammond began offering the $15 reward, he has paid $15, for one returned parking sign.

THE PROBLEM : A missing street sign in Essex caused residents to miss deliveries and visitors. THE BACKSTORY : Roxanne Fleming doesn't know what happened to the sign. She lives on the northern leg of West Road, toward Hopkins Creek off Middleborough Road in Essex. The sign marking her street - and alerting drivers to the dead end - disappeared over the summer. Fleming called to report the problem, because without the sign people were getting lost. That section of West Road is offset from the part running roughly south off Middleborough Road, so the family's guests have missed the intersection.

The driver of a cab that careened down a city sidewalk yesterday told police that the gas pedal had stuck to the floor, sending his out-of-control sedan crashing into five teen-agers, three street signs, a building and a tree.Eight people were treated at area hospitals, including five high school students and a passenger in the cab. Police said none of the injuries was life-threatening. One teen-ager suffered two broken legs, a broken collarbone and a broken finger.Left on the sidewalk along Harford Road in Northeast Baltimore were splintered steps, toppled signs and scattered tree limbs -- reminders of a routine cab ride and a morning jaunt to school that turned into pandemonium.

Now there are six councilmen known to have taken football game tickets from developers, along with Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, who says the tickets he got were "for his wife" ("Councilman took football tickets from developer," May 9). According to Don Mohler, Mr. Kamenetz' chief of staff, the county plans to update its ethics law soon to comply with state guidelines. Will it also comply with county laws it has ignored, such as its refusal to comply with zoning laws in one neighborhood and its refusal to enforce the posted street signs, which has put the lives of residents at risk?

Now there are six councilmen known to have taken football game tickets from developers, along with Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, who says the tickets he got were "for his wife" ("Councilman took football tickets from developer," May 9). According to Don Mohler, Mr. Kamenetz' chief of staff, the county plans to update its ethics law soon to comply with state guidelines. Will it also comply with county laws it has ignored, such as its refusal to comply with zoning laws in one neighborhood and its refusal to enforce the posted street signs, which has put the lives of residents at risk?

The problem: Street lights and directional signs remain dark in West Baltimore. The back story: Harry E. Bennett Jr. regularly travels from his home in Sandtown-Winchester to Westview Park to go bowling. For months, he's been troubled by the dark street signs in his neighborhood. At two intersections, lights have been dim on two green overhead signs — like the kind you see on highways — that direct drivers around the "Highway to Nowhere. " The signs are located on North Fulton Street, guiding drivers onto westbound Franklin Street, and on westbound Mulberry Street, to North Monroe Street.

There's no verdict yet in the trial of the pit bull that came to be known as Phoenix, but I say: guilty. No, not Travers and Tremayne Johnson, the 18-year-old twins accused of torching the dog on a West Baltimore street in 2009. She was burned so horribly that she had to be put down several days later. I have no idea if the Johnson brothers did it, or, rather, whether the prosecutors sufficiently proved their case or fell short, as the defense contends. Anyone who has been a juror knows how hard it can be to come up with a verdict in that jury room — much harder than coming up with an opinion out here in the peanut gallery.

Ryan Boddy was following instructions. After back-to-back snowstorms, Boddy dug out his wife's car on Calvert Street in Mount Vernon, a snow emergency route. Posted signs state cars would be towed from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. on the east side of the street, and from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on the west side, so he parked it on the east side the morning of Feb. 11. Still, he walked out a few hours later and found the vehicle had been towed. Boddy said he understood that this was an unprecedented storm and "it makes sense that they wouldn't have this down to a science."

THE PROBLEM : A missing street sign in Essex caused residents to miss deliveries and visitors. THE BACKSTORY : Roxanne Fleming doesn't know what happened to the sign. She lives on the northern leg of West Road, toward Hopkins Creek off Middleborough Road in Essex. The sign marking her street - and alerting drivers to the dead end - disappeared over the summer. Fleming called to report the problem, because without the sign people were getting lost. That section of West Road is offset from the part running roughly south off Middleborough Road, so the family's guests have missed the intersection.

Responding to laments from frustrated motorists, Howard County public works officials gradually are replacing Columbia's distinctive - but hard-to-read - street signs with rectangular signs that have a more traditional design. The changes, which allow for larger print than the older, box-like signs, are in line with signage recommendations from a federal government manual and may be especially welcome for older drivers who complain about difficulty reading the current signs on the fly. "This was primarily done to get the letter-size larger, and the visibility is so much better," said Mark DeLuca, chief of the traffic engineering division of the Howard County Department of Public Works.

City police requested help from the Maryland State Police yesterday to determine whether a mechanical defect caused a taxicab to jump a curb in Northeast Baltimore on Wednesday morning and hit five people on a sidewalk.Sgt. Mark E. Howe, a department spokesman, said the 1991 Ford Crown Victoria owned by Yellow Van Service has been impounded at a city police lot.Howe said that city traffic investigators will wait until mechanical tests are completed on the car before determining a cause.The driver, Larry Dean Hall, 43, told investigators that his gas pedal had stuck to the floor, causing the sedan to careen down a sidewalk in the 2600 block of Harford Road.

Vandals smashed car windshields with pumpkins, dumped eggs and soap in gas tanks, slashed the interior of at least one car and spray painted graffiti on houses and street signs from Linthicum to Severna Park in a Devil's Night rampage, county police said yesterday.Police said they were bombarded with calls yesterday from dozens of Anne Arundel residents who had awakened to find thousands of dollars in damage to their houses and cars.Judy Henters of the 600 block of Shore Road in Severna Park told police vandals poured a bag of cement on her car Monday night.

IT'S FUNNY how some people - myself included - can drive around for years, wondering why Howard County street signs are color-coded without trying to find the answer. Karen Gilbert isn't one of them. "The street signs in the Columbia area are different colors - some green, some brown, some blue," Gilbert said. "At the corner of Eden Brook and Guilford Road, the Guilford Road sign is green on one side of the street and blue on the other. What is the significance of the different colors?"

For months after her teen-age daughter died in a car accident at East Oliver Street and Broadway last July, Gina Gant couldn't bring herself to go near the intersection. Her daughter, Tiffany Gant, had just celebrated her 18th birthday when the car she was riding in collided with a police cruiser. The Dunbar High School honors graduate had planned to attend Coppin State College and become a criminal defense attorney. But in November, something else happened at the intersection that helped to ease her mother's pain a bit. A bright red-and-white street sign proclaiming "Tiffany Gant Way" went up, marking the corner in her daughter's memory.