Traffic

ATLANTA -- When Joe and Elizabeth Taylor were expecting their first child three years ago, they decided to move out of the city of Atlanta and into the suburbs 25 miles away, looking for good schools, safe streets and other young families who would be their neighbors.But what the Taylors didn't bargain for was the traffic -- 16 lanes of asphalt clogged with other suburbanites creeping to their jobs in one of the fastest-growing regions in the country. Fed up, the Taylors moved back to Atlanta last month, joining thousands of others who are returning to the city.

FEELINGS have been bruised, civic pride wounded, but that's no reason to stop working to ease traffic jams on Route 30 as it cuts through Manchester and Hampstead.The governor supports a $35 million bypass of the state highway for Hampstead, but a $70 million bypass for Manchester is unacceptable because it would promote development sprawl. A couple of miffed Manchester council members propose a dog-in-the-manger approach: try to kill Hampstead's bypass out of spite. The Carroll County commissioners, meanwhile, grumble about Annapolis politics.

Traffic engineers have their own term for an intersection with a built-in problem: a "misfunction junction."The residents of four homes on Hampshire Road face such an intersection every day at the end of their street: a traffic signal that serves the other three directions of traffic but turns a blind eye to them.The signal was not meant for their road, but for the entrance to the Black & Decker Corp. plant on Route 30 just south of Hampstead, and it is about 30 feet off center from Hampshire Road.

On-street nighttime parking will continue along York Road in the heart of Towson, boosting business leaders' hopes of revitalizing the struggling downtown district.After a long-awaited traffic study, the State Highway Administration said recently that the 15 to 20 parking spaces on York Road between Chesapeake and Pennsylvania avenues are not causing congestion and should not be eliminated during the evening hours.The study was initiated by the SHA after motorists complained about congestion along that section of state-maintained York Road, which is home to a number of restaurants and stores.

Dealing a blow to Pasadena residents worried about the dangers of increasing traffic, County Executive Janet S. Owens said yesterday that the county will move ahead with plans to complete East-West Boulevard, extending the road from Jumpers Hole Road to Ritchie Highway.While the news was welcomed by Severna Park residents who hailed the project as an end to their area's traffic congestion on Benfield Boulevard, it was a defeat for Pasadena residents whose neighborhoods would become the end destination of that traffic.

Many residents of Carroll's most populated area are opposing the roads projects that could relieve traffic on major thoroughfares, particularly Routes 26, 32 and 97.The Freedom Area Comprehensive Plan, which would guide growth in South Carroll for the next six years, proposes 21 road projects. Many would allow traffic to circulate through neighborhoods and avoid using highways. Other projects would complete long-planned connections to the thoroughfares.But residents attending a public hearing before the Carroll County Planning and Zoning Commission on Thursday complained of the potential for increased traffic in their neighborhoods.

In South Carroll, where traffic clogs the major arteries, residents welcome connector roads but not the speeders they draw to their neighborhoods.As long-planned road connections are completed through subdivisions in the most populated area of the county, officials are hearing more complaints about speeding."

In the week since some Annapolis residents celebrated the closing of the bridge over Spa Creek by creating the fictional Maritime Republic of Eastport, their cheers have turned to belly-aching groans over the traffic snarls that have resulted.With the link between Eastport and the downtown historic district under repair for another two weeks, the 13,000 motorists who used the bridge daily have been clogging Bay Ridge Avenue, Forest Drive and Spa Road and creating a gridlock nightmare."I've been sitting in a helicopter watching this whole thing, and it just looks like a wave of traffic hitting the city from Washington and Baltimore around 5 p.m.," said Sgt. Philip Turner, a special events coordinator for the city Police Department.

For the first time in a non- emergency situation, the city is closing traffic on the northbound Jones Falls Expressway during church-going hours Sunday for a festival designed to draw pedestrians, bikers and roller bladers to use the highway to enjoy the little-known waterway below.The city's deputy director of Public Works, Dave Montgomery, said yesterday the decision to close a three-mile stretch of Interstate 83 -- the key artery connecting downtown and North Baltimore -- from 8 a.m. to noon Sunday was reached after a careful study of traffic patterns.

IF you have lived in Baltimore for five or 50 years, you've probably said, ''Traffic's getting worse.'' And you're right.If you were to chart the problem, you'd draw a line, starting at the left side of the page, that would steadily rise, showing the increasing traffic that crowds our roads. Under that line, you could draw a second one representing the number of roads and parking lots built to accommodate the growing traffic. The distance between those lines at the far right of the page is a major problem.

Why no manslaughter charge in Hopkins student's death? According to the article 'Terrifying Trip through the city" (Oct. 27), eyewitnesses called the police and reported Thomas Meighan's alleged unsafe driving - not just once but enough that he's charged with 17 traffic offenses based on the eyewitness reports. Yet none of these offenses include manslaughter for the death of Miriam Frankl. There were eyewitnesses to that too, but I read (and re-read several times) that according to the police, the states attorney's office might not have enough evidence to charge him in her death.

The problem:: Why is a lane of a busy downtown Baltimore street closed to traffic during the evening rush? The back story:: Charlie Dell has had plenty of time to observe what's been slowing down traffic along Franklin Street just east of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. For more than a month, the Catonsville resident noticed that the southernmost lane of westbound Franklin has been blocked off to allow drivers to enter and exit a garage between Paca and Greene streets near the Social Security Administration building.

The next time you're in a really nasty Baltimore traffic jam, glance at the driver in the car next to you. Note the grimace, the furrowed brow, the resigned stare. With its start-stop traffic and stomach-churning delays, rush-hour driving in and around Charm City has become a daily test of endurance that tries even the hardiest souls. According to a recent study from the Texas Transportation Institute, Baltimore drivers spent an average of 44 hours in traffic each year - time that could be better spent with family and friends, relaxing, even working.

Night travel between Baltimore and Washington will be slowed over the next few months as work crews close lanes, shift traffic patterns and erect structural steel to build the interchange linking Interstate 95 to the new Intercounty Connector. The closings, which began this week, mark the first significant impact that the $2.5 billion ICC project will have on Baltimore-area travelers. Previously, most of the construction had been along the east-west path of the toll road, which will connect U.S. 1 with Interstate 270 in Montgomery County.

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...

From a starkly utilitarian building lodged between the coal heaps and salt piles of industrial Canton, Rebecca Pindell will have the best seat in town today to view the traffic mess on Maryland's highways on the busiest travel day of the year. Pindell will be watching the passing parade at the state's toll facilities and other roads on a bank of TV screens at the Maryland Transportation Authority's operations center at the Fort McHenry Tunnel. And if anything interrupts the free flow of traffic on the three bay crossings around Baltimore, she will be poised to send help instantly.

Some folks find it easy to dismiss the people who complain about the traffic tie-ups that result from police funerals as heartless cranks. Others have no problem scorning the officers in those motorcades as public-be-damned obstructionists taking part in what one reader called "long, pagan spectacle funerals." The opposing points of view weighed in after last week's column that followed the services of a state police paramedic who lost his life in a Medevac helicopter crash near Andrews Air Force Base.

Within a week, the 65,000 motorists who go through the Interstate 95 and Routes 24 and 924 interchange in Abingdon every day will begin to see temporary concrete barriers installed, as crews isolate the work area for a $38 million effort to improve the troublesome crossing. Drivers might still experience construction-related delays but a nonstop ride from I-95 north to Singer Road is in sight. The state plans to eliminate the signal for through traffic on Route 24 by building a bridge over Route 924. "That intersection has always been a bottleneck," said Janice Troutman of Bel Air. "I like the idea of going over it and avoiding the hassles."

BRAC and traffic: The thousands of new employees coming to military-related jobs in Harford County in the next three years will likely grapple with traffic congestion caused by inadequate roads, failing intersections and insufficient mass transit. Maryland's revenue shortfall has delayed several key projects that were designed to relieve commuter traffic to and from Aberdeen Proving Ground, which is expected to grow by about 10,000 jobs within the next three years. Columbia plan: Now that a mound of paperwork has been turned over to the county, the effort to redevelop Columbia is officially under way, and it promises to set in motion an intensifying public debate over the project and the approval process.

Few hunting for information on the Web are as obsessed as those searching for news about the iPhone. According to a study conducted by comScore Inc., a Web traffic measuring service based in Reston, Va., 1.3 million people conducted 6.9 million searches for iPhone-related terms in the month of April - a full month before Steve Jobs announced the iPhone 3G at the Worldwide Developers Conference. Other topics may generate more searches overall, but the folks digging for iPhone nuggets search more frequently.