Commuting by Rail: Was It the Good Old Days?
The recent controversy over a commuter train from Sykesville reminds me of such a train in days past.
I had graduated from Western Maryland College in May and was beginning my first year of teaching in the Carroll County school system. I found myself in a rather unique situation. I was assigned to two schools, Mount Airy and Sykesville, as the girls' physical education teacher.
This became very interesting when my two teams played against each other, but that's another story.
Another introduction into my life at this time was the commuter train from Mount Airy to Baltimore. On Wednesday mornings, I boarded the train in Mount Airy to ride to Sykesville, returning on Friday evenings.
This train left Mount Airy at 6:30 a.m. five days a week, arriving in Baltimore at 8:30 in time for commuters to get to 9 a.m. jobs; it left Baltimore at 5:30 p.m., returning to Mount Airy by 7:30, where it sat overnight.
On the schedule board in Camden Station, it was called the Mount Airy Accommodation and beneath the heading there must have listed 20 stops it made along the way. Imagine spending four hours each day getting to and from a job 30 miles away.
It sounds like an anachronism in our fast-paced '90s, but in the late '40s when incomes did not cover the cost of buying and operating a car, this was no doubt truly an accommodation for its passengers.
Fran Bartlett
Westminster
Control the Growth
The public hearing on the evening of Jan. 31 was a laugher.
The very biased crowd was rude and also selfish. Most were just thinking of their own welfare and not the good of others or the county in which we live.
The county commissioners have to control growth and improve the present conditions such as the overcrowded schools, water and sewage plants, roads and highways and add to the police force first.
Their are five different garbage trucks on our road each week, plus oil trucks and moving vans and through traffic from construction equipment breaking down the blacktop. This road is posted "No Thru Traffic," by the way.
The Liberty Road corridor is fast becoming over-commercialized, which makes more entrances, raising the chances for more accidents. Trying to get onto Liberty Road from either side is taking your life in your hands. The commuters race out of the county in the mornings and race back home in the evenings.
This same heavy flow can be seen on any road that goes out of our county.
The developers and builders should realize this problem of overcrowding our facilities. They surely will not go broke if they take some jobs building outside of Carroll County.
We have lived in South Carroll for 45 years. Our home was the sixth on our road. Now this county is a young city. I support local business and I must say that I made my living in Baltimore County and some of my customers were commuters from Carroll County.
Carroll County has become a bedroom community which has grown too fast for the services it is obligated to provide for its citizens.
The bottom line is that the county commissioners must control the growth and not let the developers saturate our now pristine county.
hilip C. Banes
Sykesville
Credit Where It's Due
I rarely write to comment on editorials in any newspaper. However, I feel it mandatory for me to set the record straight on the editorial that appeared in The Sun for Carroll County on Jan. 31, entitled, "Manchester Bypass Gets on Track."
The $1 million to begin engineering studies for the Manchester Bypass came about as a result of numerous meetings conducted with then-Secretary of Transportation O. James Lighthizer and State Highway Administrator Hal Kassoff.
The $1 million was included in the budget by Mr. Lighthizer. I was made aware of this addition in early December and, of course, at this time, it was not public information.
This was, of course, the final budget of Gov. William Donald Schaefer. I thought it very important to give credit where it is deserved.
Richard N. Dixon
Annapolis
The writer is a state delegate representing Legislative District 5A.