Toll Facilities

SOME DOINGS are under way in cyberspace this month at the Maryland Transportation Authority, the agency that oversees the state's seven toll facilities and the roughly $121 million collected at the booths each year.Just surf on over to the agency's World Wide Web page for the latest information on (yawn) toll-taking in Maryland. Among the offerings on the Internet, the MdTA is providing "descriptions of toll facilities, current toll rates and facts about the authority's police force," according to a two-page release detailing this new venture.

Two Carroll County teen-agers were seriously injured yesterday when the stolen sports car in which they were riding crashed on the Eastern Shore, ending a 45-mile chase that led across the Bay Bridge and along U.S. 301 at speeds sometimes topping 100 mph, police said.The car was going at least 90 mph when it crashed into a Toll Facilities police cruiser and a tree near Barclay, hitting with such force that it ripped one of the boy's seat belts, according to police.The driver, 17, and passenger, 16, were wearing seat belts and may have been spared fatal injuries because of them, police said.

Kellam graduates from police academyLeroy S. Kellam Jr. of Belcamp recently graduated from the Maryland Toll Facilities Police Training Academy.The 23rd graduating class consisted of 26 recruits who will become Toll Facilities Police officers, and six recruits from the Department of General Services Police. The Toll Facilities Police have law enforcement powers at the state's four toll bridges and two tunnels. These facilities are operated and maintained by the Maryland Transportation Authority.

A 29-year-old woman died yesterday morning after apparently jumping off the Bay Bridge at Annapolis, plunging 180 feet into the Chesapeake Bay, police said.Mary Alisha Mervine of Seaford, Del., was pronounced dead shortly thereafter, according to Thomas E. Freburger, a spokesman for the Maryland Toll Facilities police.The spokesman said that commuters reported seeing an abandoned Cadillac at the top of the span in the westbound lanes of U.S. 50 about 8:30 a.m. About the same time, a Department of Natural Resources employee reported having seen the woman jump.

Toll facilities police found at odd placesWhen the job search is going slowly, there's plenty of time to observe and to wonder.Observe a Maryland Toll Facilities Police car parked across the median on I-95, south of Baltimore, just inside the Beltway.Wonder what the jurisdiction of these police might be? Is this stretch of interstate highway, miles from the toll gates of the Fort McHenry Tunnel, a toll facility? Does this police force have an infrastructure duplicating that of the Maryland State Police?

Baltimore prosecutors say they cannot fulfill an agreement to return more than $3,000 seized from a Florida man in a drug arrest because a veteran Maryland Toll Facilities police officer stole the money and then killed himself.All of this confuses and frustrates Paul Kirsch, who was convicted on drug charges but maintains he knew nothing about the marijuana that police found in the luggage in his rented Lincoln Town Car. He says the cash, far from being drug money, was a loan from his mother.

You fork over the cash to pay some parking fines and get a receipt. The next thing you know, the city is dunning you for the money again because the clerk pocketed your payment and was last seen in Rio de Janeiro. Because the erstwhile trusted public servant didn't put the money in the municipal bank account, the city says you must pay again.It's that kind of maddening illogic that flows from the stand of Baltimore prosecutors in refusing to return money seized in a drug arrest a year ago. They agreed to return the money to a Florida man given probation on drug distribution charges, then reneged because the funds were stolen by a Maryland Toll Facilities officer who originally confiscated the cash during the arrest.

A Baltimore Circuit Court judge sentenced an alcoholic yesterday to a 15-year prison term in connection with a 100 mph chase and the man's use of his car to crush a Toll Facilities policeman against a telephone pole.The defendant, Thomas Barrett, has sought treatment for alcoholism numerous times, but he was legally drunk at the time of the incident.During the Aug. 11 chase, which began on Interstate 95 near the Fort McHenry Tunnel, Barrett tried to run over three pedestrians and rammed vehicles driven by the officer and another motorist, according to court records.

Natural Resources police dragged the waters around the Chesapeake Bay Bridge yesterday, searching for the body of a Glen Burnie man who is believed to have jumped from the eastbound span shortly after midnight.Rob Gould, spokesman for the state Department of Natural Resources, identified the man as Robert P. Murphy, 27. He said the man left a suicide note in the cab of a pick-up truck that Toll Facilities police found parked near the middle of the bridge about 12:15 a.m.Tom Freeburger, Toll Facilities spokesman, confirmed that police had found a note inside the 1980 Chevrolet truck, but would not divulge its contents while the investigation was ongoing.

Anne Dobbin MyerRiding teacherServices for Anne Dobbin Myer, who taught riding and was a former garden club head, will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, North Charles Street and Melrose Avenue.Mrs. Myer, who was 83, died Thursday of emphysema at Keswick Home.She had served as the head riding teacher at St. Timothy's School in the early 1950s and was a flower gardener and former president of the Catonsville Garden Club.The former Anne Parker Dobbin was a native of Baltimore and a 1925 graduate of the Bryn Mawr School.

Almost 5,000 E-ZPass subscribers in the state closed their accounts last month after a $1.50-a-month fee took effect, the Maryland Transportation Authority said Friday. The 4,990 customers who dropped their accounts in July were the most for any month since the authority voted in January to impose the fees. According to spokeswoman Teri Moss, Maryland continues to have 557,000 active subscribers to the electronic toll collection plan. She disputed published reports that 19,000 customers had filed requests to drop their accounts, saying that was a tally of inquiries about possible cancellation.

Are you ready to pay higher tolls at Maryland toll facilities to widen a highway whose benefits you'll never use and which puts Baltimore at a competitive disadvantage? It's not out of the question. Ben Ross of the Action Committee for Transit raised that possibility while we were chatting the other day about the proposed $4.6 billion project to widen Interstate 270 by adding two express toll lanes in each direction. Ross is not exactly unbiased. He doesn't like the proposed project - which has been backed by the Montgomery County Planning Board and some County Council members there - on environmental grounds.

E-ZPass might not be as E-Z on your wallet after July. The Maryland Transportation Authority proposed yesterday to begin charging owners of the electronic toll-collection devices a fee of $1.50 a month - whether they use them or not. The authority also outlined plans to charge E-ZPass users for new or replacement transponders and to raise tolls by 33 percent to 80 percent for heavy trucks and vehicles pulling trailers. The changes, which are expected to be approved this month, are part of a package of measures the authority is proposing this year in order to raise an added $60 million to finance its operations.

Cecil County officials want to do away with the tolls on the John F. Kennedy Memorial Highway and at the Thomas J. Hatem Memorial Bridge, the oldest toll facility in Maryland. They say the tolls, at Exit 93 on Interstate 95 and at U.S. 40 over the Susquehanna River, have thwarted economic development in nearby Perryville and Port Deposit and would deter Army personnel and other workers from settling in Cecil County when thousands of military jobs move to Maryland. But relocating the tolls won't necessarily guarantee a reversal of fortune for the county, and rapid growth there would strain already taxed water resources.

Bringing a fledgling privatization trend from the Midwest to Maryland's doorstep, Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell is seeking offers for the sale or long-term lease of the Pennsylvania Turnpike - a nearly 70-year-old icon of innovative American engineering. Rendell's objective is to raise billions of dollars for Pennsylvania transportation projects that otherwise might require increased taxes. His model: Indiana, where an Australian-Spanish conglomerate owns a toll road. The turnpike was the first major U.S. toll road of the automobile era and a prototype for the Interstate Highway System.

Gary A. Smith, who rose from a draftsman straight out of high school to become the head of the state's toll facilities on roads, bridges and tunnels, died Thursday doing one of the things he loved best -- taking a fishing trip with friends and family. An avid angler, Mr. Smith, 70, and his friends traveled to Grantsville in Western Maryland annually for years, spending a couple of days in late April to go fly-fishing. Friends called the civil engineer from Harford County a "fish-whisperer" for his uncanny ability to "read" waters, catching and releasing fish where others had been unsuccessful.

THE PORT OF Baltimore is such a unique entrepreneurial entity and plays such a vital role in Maryland's economy that the time has come to restructure its operation and create a quasi-independent entity to enhance its performance. Controversy swirling around the recent resignation of the port's much-admired executive director, James J. White, only heightens the need to act. Three years ago, I led a transition team for Gov. Robert Ehrlich Jr. that was examining Maryland's transportation agencies.

Maryland motorists who want to save time will soon be able to use the state's electronic M-TAG system at even more places to pay tolls without stopping. The state Board of Public Works approved a $23.8 million contract yesterday to expand the electronic toll collection system now used by about 65,000 drivers. The contract with Lockheed Martin IMS will extend the system to the heavily traveled Chesapeake Bay Bridge and two other toll bridges in Maryland, according to state transportation officials.

SOME DOINGS are under way in cyberspace this month at the Maryland Transportation Authority, the agency that oversees the state's seven toll facilities and the roughly $121 million collected at the booths each year.Just surf on over to the agency's World Wide Web page for the latest information on (yawn) toll-taking in Maryland. Among the offerings on the Internet, the MdTA is providing "descriptions of toll facilities, current toll rates and facts about the authority's police force," according to a two-page release detailing this new venture.

Two Carroll County teen-agers were seriously injured yesterday when the stolen sports car in which they were riding crashed on the Eastern Shore, ending a 45-mile chase that led across the Bay Bridge and along U.S. 301 at speeds sometimes topping 100 mph, police said.The car was going at least 90 mph when it crashed into a Toll Facilities police cruiser and a tree near Barclay, hitting with such force that it ripped one of the boy's seat belts, according to police.The driver, 17, and passenger, 16, were wearing seat belts and may have been spared fatal injuries because of them, police said.