You will forgive Mary Virginia Wilson of Towson if she's feeling singled out for punishment.
One day last fall, Mrs. Wilson, 81, stepped outside only to find that a no-parking sign had mysteriously materialized in front of her Glendale Road house.
Her house and no one else's.
In fact, except for a small stretch at the mouth of Glendale near Loch Raven Boulevard, parking is allowed everywhere along Glendale except in front of Mrs. Wilson's handsome brick home.
"This is a terrible nuisance," Mrs. Wilson laments.
It was especially so, she says, during the holiday season when friends loaded with gifts found they had to walk some distance to deliver the goodies.
Well, rest assured, Mrs. Wilson, you weren't a target. Nothing could be further from the truth. Ridiculous. Target, indeed.
You were an afterthought, Mrs. Wilson. You were the flotsam and jetsam produced by the great traffic debate raging in your neighborhood.
It has been a complicated story, but The Intrepid One, being nothing if not intrepid, has managed to get to the bottom of it. Pay attention.
The problems began when the Glendale/Glenmount Community Association determined that Glendale Road was turning into a shortcut between the Glenmount Apartments and Loch Raven. According to Jean Eckhardt, president of the association, Glendale has become not just a through street but a veritable speedway.
To slow cars, the neighborhood association asked the county to make the intersection of Glendale and Highland Drive -- which FTC becomes St. Andrews Way -- a four-way stop. Now, only the cross traffic (on Highland and St. Andrews) must stop at the two signs at Glendale.
The county, however, refused to put up the additional signs to stop drivers on Glendale as well.
Stephen E. Weber, chief of traffic engineering in Baltimore County, explained that four-way stops do not slow down traffic or reduce the risk of accidents. On the contrary, just the opposite, he says. Studies conducted by his department, echoing the results of research done elsewhere, show that motorists actually increase their speed at midblock as they approach four-way stop signs or they drive through the stop signs, counting on compliance by the cross-traffic drivers.
The county is considering making some of the streets one-way to discourage through traffic, a solution that doesn't exactly enthrallmembers of the community association. The debate continues.
So where does Mrs. Wilson come in?
Last fall, while in the neighborhood studying the intersection -- where Mrs. Wilson lives -- Mr. Weber's engineers did discover a problem they believed they could address immediately.
Glendale curves as it approaches Highland from the south. County engineers determined that if cars were parked on the bow, drivers on Highland who were making a left turn onto Glendale would have a poor view of oncoming traffic.
The result: Mrs. Wilson's no-parking sign.
Mr. Weber says he doesn't believe the restriction is onerous, noting that parking still is allowed on the Highland side of Mrs. Wilson's corner lot and that she also has a driveway.
Still, as Ms. Eckhardt points out, the whole episode, which originated with a desire to improve that intersection, ended up "backfiring" on Mrs. Wilson.
So don't worry, Mrs. Wilson, no one's out to get you. That #F doesn't mean you won't be gotten anyway.
On 40 at Ingleside, stingy lights
That's what had John Turner steamed when he called recently about the intersection of Baltimore National Pike and Ingleside Avenue at the Westview Mall.
Mr. Turner says the left turn arrow that controls traffic on Baltimore National Pike "doesn't stay green long enough for sufficient amount of traffic to pass through it before it changes red again, especially during rush hour traffic. Could you have somebody check into it?"
Somebody did, namely Darrell Wiles, the state highway administration's district engineer for traffic in Baltimore and Harford counties.
Mr. Wiles found that Mr. Turner was absolutely right. For westbound drivers, the left-turn arrow was green only momentarily, allowing just one car to turn while the rest waited in line. In other words, it was one parsimonious turn signal.
As to what was going wrong, readers will undoubtedly recall Intrepid's treatise in May on traffic lights. For those of you who were absent that day, a quick primer:
Buried under the surface near traffic lights is an insulated wire called a "loop detector," which creates a magnetic field under the roadway. When a car enters that field, a message is sent to a computer, also located at the intersection, alerting it to the presence of a car. The computer then illuminates the appropriate signal light. As other cars enter the field, the light will remain green up to a maximum amount of time.
Now, back to Baltimore National Pike. Mr. Wiles found that the loop detector was sensing the first car and triggering the green arrow, but failing to notice the other cars in line. "There was a problem with detection," he says.
The problem, he says, has now been corrected.
Detection, though, is not always what's wrong with stingy lights. At a properly working signal, the arrow will remain green only for a certain time even if cars are still waiting to turn. Without a time limit, no one else would ever be able to move through the intersection as long as cars were waiting to make the turn. Sometimes, though, the maximum is set too low and must be readjusted. "It's a balancing act," says Mr. Wiles.
Isn't it always?