Reconstructing Route 1
The two-mile stretch of Baltimore Avenue (Route 1) from the Northgate of campus to the Beltway could easily be mistaken for a Hooverville. The prevalence of abandoned and blighted properties combined with the unforgiving traffic congestion and safety concerns make traveling this section of road a dread. Fortunately, the state has drawn up plans to spend $110 million to reconstruct this entire length of Route 1.
We obtained from the State Highway Administration (SHA) the design document for the reconstruction project. Though the scope of the project extends from College Avenue all the way to just north the of Beltway, the project has yet to receive full funding. To make reconstruction more fiscally palatable to the state, both the City Council and University recommended that just the section nearest the campus (from College Avenue to MD-193, specifically) receive priority for the project. If the state declares this portion too ambitious for the state treasury, the University would settle for just College Avenue to just north of Paint Branch Parkway.
Besides the array of safety statistics and pedestrian volume diagrams, the SHA design document includes the following features for Route 1:
- Replacement of the center turn-lane (often colorfully called “the suicide lane”) with a tree-studded median. Occasional left-turn lanes will be cut into the median at certain points to consolidate all left-turning traffic.
- Inclusion of occasional cut-outs for bus stops. Currently, stopped buses on Route 1 tie up traffic. The state hopes to mitigate the blockage with cut-outs like the one adjacent the Nymburu Amphitheater on Campus Drive.
- Continuous sidewalks set back from the roadway. Sidewalk coverage on Route 1 is spotty at best and those that do exist often require pedestrians to walk within two feet of speeding traffic. The design document shows most stretches of sidewalk separated from the roadway by a strip of grass, itself occasionally studded with trees. (See below for the SHA rendering)
- Elimination of the ridiculous intersection at The View. The View would no longer need the land underneath #1 Liquor to connect to Route 1 properly. The state proposes eliminating the light and left-turn onto Navahoe Street but keeping the intersection at Berwyn House Road, opposite The View’s northern Route 1 driveway (though the driveway and Berwyn House Road do not meet cleanly, one can resolve this easily) . Since the drawings were put together before the construction of The View they neglect to place a light at the Berwyn House Road-Route 1-View driveway intersection. This is easily resolved. (See below)
A few drawings to note:
Above: The portion of Route 1 in front of The View and McDonald’s.
Below: Section drawings for what Route 1 will look like. Hopefully all utilities will be buried.
Click here to view our interactive project map
February 2nd, 2007 at 11:09 pm
bummer to see telephone poles in the diagrams…..i know it would be costly but “undergrounding” the utility lines would be HUGE
February 3rd, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Undergrounding utilities - a great goal, but it would take a miracle. We got an estimate of about $25 million in about 2000 and an estimate of over $40 million a few years later. We are talking about removing about 100 poles.
In 1999 I placed a referendum question on the City’s election ballot about raising property taxes by 2 cents (about a 4% tax increase) to generate monies for an undergrounding fund (or other lesser ways to hide the utilities). At the time it would have raised about $100,000 a year for such a fund. The referendum item got about only a 36% favorable vote.
State Highway is willing to contribute the monies they would spend to just move the poles, which will be about $10 million, if we can find the remaining funding to underground utilities.
While a few grants have been given out to underground utilities throughout the state, the grants have been miniscule compared with the cost we face here.
At a minimum, it would likely take enormous contributions by the businesses and the City to even have a chance to underground the utilities from the Beltway to the Northgate of campus.
February 3rd, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Perhaps the undergrounding could be funded through tax increment financing, which would be repaid by property taxes along Route 1 or by a development fee collected from each new project along the corridor.
Alternately, each new big project could be required to pay for undergrounding for its street front and for that of one-eighth of a mile in each direction.
February 3rd, 2007 at 2:03 pm
I remember reading the Jefferson Square DSP and they avoided just that kind of requirement because it doesn’t make sense to underground 1 or 2 poles.
February 4th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
I know sometimes that the lines of vehicles on the “suicide lane” are huge, what could be done to avoid the likelihood that cars overfill the left turn cutouts, and end up blocking traffic?
February 5th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
time for the University to “pony up”…..there is strategic importance to undergrounding for the school’s image
February 5th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
I think that the long lines in the suicide lane generally reflect that you can wait a long time between breaks in traffic. With more traffic lights you will have more breaks. I also suspect that the left turn cutouts will be at a signalized intersections where turns will get a left turn arrow.
Subject to check, I believe the only developer who dealt with the poles was Terrapin Station who ran the wires behind the building.