Tunnels

Myron O. "Mike" Beatty, a retired paint company executive, died June 26 of complications from pulmonary fibrosis at Homewood at Plum Creek in Hanover, Pa. The former Lutherville resident was 84. He was born in a caretaker's house at the Concord Cemetery in Grove City, Ohio. Family members said his parents were tenant farmers and he was expected to contribute to the family finances. As a boy, he helped deliver movie reels to theaters for the Film Transit Co. As a part of the job, he saw new releases and occasionally met film stars.

Traffic on southbound Interstate 95 was delayed north of the Fort McHenry Tunnel tollbooths while crews cleaned up oil spilled due to a two-vehicle collision, a Maryland Transportation Authority Police spokesman said. Injuries were reported in the crash, and one person was taken to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center with non-life-threatening injuries, said the spokesman, Sgt. Kirk Perez. The incident was reported just before 7 a.m. and traffic was backed up seven miles at 7:45 a.m., he said.

On a train bound for Washington the other evening, I considered how much Baltimore is a city built atop tunnels. As we slipped into the darkness just beyond Penn Station, I smiled at how Baltimoreans grow fascinated by stories about our dank underground byways, under the harbor, downtown, the streets, even Federal Hill. I collect tunnel stories — like the one about the kayaker who traveled the covered section of the Jones Falls, a trip that took him from a spot near Falls Road to the harbor.

Editor: A recent editorial lambasted Governor O'Malley for seeking a toll increase for the Hatem Bridge across the Susquehanna River, supposedly because it is a payback to voters from Harford and Cecil counties who did not support him. Never mind that tolls on the Bay Bridge, Key Bridge and both tunnels are also going to be increased. I guess he is mad at the voters who live in those jurisdictions as well. Sen. Nancy Jacobs and several of her no-tax friends stood on the bridge and complained mightily about the increase several weeks ago. For over 35 years I traveled to work through the 895 tunnel and gladly paid the toll increases as they occurred, because I realized that it not only takes funding to build these entities, it also takes funds to maintain and add improvements as they age. Why do all these dead-beat Tea Party/Republican politicians think we can have a free lunch forever?

Baltimoreans who are horrified at the prospect of paying more to cross wide bodies of water get their chance to whoop and holler tonight at Digital Harbor High School when the Maryland Transportation Authority holds its first public hearing in the region on a pending proposal for the most sweeping toll increases in Maryland's history. It's not a stretch to predict that opponents will outnumber defenders of the increases by about a zillion to one. The arguments will be impassioned, angry and probably even tearful — but ultimately irrelevant.

Last month's horrific crash that threw a 70-year-old retired sportswriter off the Bay Bridge and killed him underscores the fact that long bridges and tunnels are an especially dangerous place for drivers to be on less than their best behavior. The investigation into the April 18 crash in which a truck rear-ended a broken-down car isn't complete, so judgment will be suspended as to who was at fault. But if that crash was the result of a traffic infraction, it raises a question about why violations on the Bay Bridge and other toll bridges and in tunnels are treated like garden-variety offenses.

Joggers, bikers and pedestrians will soon have a good reason not to hustle when they pass through a popular yet graffiti-covered tunnel that connects the woods on either side of busy Oakland Mills Road in Columbia. The concrete walls of the 75-foot-long underpass, built in 1974, are the unlikely canvas of Mariama Barr-Dallas, an Oakland Mills High School student who was selected to paint the pair of murals to mask graffiti there and beautify Owen Brown. "I've always liked drawing, but I only recently discovered that painting is also something I can do," the 17-year-old senior said of the 8-foot-high panels depicting nature scenes and wildlife, executed in exterior house paint colors she mixes herself.

A Maryland State Police trooper shot a New Jersey man in the hand after a high-speed chase on Interstate 95 that ended in Prince George's County Sunday night, according to police. At about 9:10 p.m., Thorne A. Wright, 23, was driving a GMC Envoy sport utility vehicle through the Fort McHenry Tunnel that Maryland Transportation Authority Police identified as stolen, police said. The vehicle had New Jersey license plates and had been reported stolen on Saturday. Four MdTA officers tried to stop the car south of the tunnel but Wright, who has addresses in Woodside and Lakehurst, N.J., accelerated, and officers pursued.

A school bus caught fire in the Fort McHenry Tunnel Tuesday, closing six of its eight traffic lanes and causing significant traffic backups, but police said the blaze was extinguished without injuries. Sgt. Jonathan Green, a spokesman for the Maryland Transportation Authority Police, said a school bus owned by Durham School Services occupied by a driver and an assistant caught fire about 4:30 p.m. in the left northbound bore of the four-bore tunnel. Two occupants escaped the bus without injury, Green said.