The nice folks at the State Highway Administration respectfully offer this advice to all of you who have written or called with complaints about changes at the intersection of Falls Road and Greenspring Valley Road:
CHILL OUT, WILL YA!
If drivers will only be patient, assures Darrell Wiles, the state highway administration's man in Baltimore County, they will see improvements in traffic flow through that intersection, lower blood pressure readings and a big fat tax refund, too. (Just wanted to make sure we hadn't lost anyone.)
The problems began -- as they often do -- with the highway administration attempting to make life better. By altering the channeling of eastbound traffic on Greenspring Valley, engineers made it easier for drivers to make the right turn on red so they could head south on Falls.
But while doing that work, the highway crew got the idea for a couple of more changes at that intersection. That's when they discovered that one person's improvement can lead to another's conniption.
PROBLEM NO. 1: In the old days, as you drove north on Falls past the intersection, the left lane merged into the right as Falls narrowed from a two-lane to a one-lane road. Now, thanks to a -- of paint here and there, the surviving lane is the left one.
"This is a complete reversal of the traffic pattern that had existed probably since the Jones Falls Expressway was built many years ago," writes Harry Silverwood Jr. of Timonium.
"The result is that most vehicles continue to stay in the right hand lane as they pass through the Greenspring Valley Road intersection, unaware of the fact that they are in a lane required to 'merge left'. . . .
"This has caused a fair amount of aggravation, horn-blowing and a couple of near-misses."
(Not to quibble, Mr. Silverwood, but you really mean "near-hits," don't you? As George Carlin points out, collisions are the "near-misses.")
PROBLEM NO. 2: Northbound drivers on Falls Road who plan to turn left onto Greenspring Valley now can do so from two lanes instead of one.
But, as drivers have discovered, those two lanes are immediately squeezed into only one westbound lane on Greenspring Valley.
As a result, reader Ray Getz believes the state has created a "real traffic bottleneck on Greenspring [Valley]."
The answer to both problems, Mr. Wiles says, is patience and understanding.
It is true, he says, that the highway administration has changed the merge on Falls Road, but there was a logical reason. The single lane that exists after the merge has always lined up with the left lane, not the right. Therefore it made more sense to have the right traffic merge left rather than making some drivers bear right and then swerve left.
New signs have been posted at the intersection and at the merge point to alert drivers.
In the end, Mr. Wiles allows that it doesn't really make much difference who merges where. "As long as people are aware and courteous," he said, "there's no problem."
Hmmmmm.
As for the Greenspring Valley squeeze, Mr. Wiles says it will soon be solved. Work will soon begin to widen the road near the intersection to accommodate a second lane of westbound traffic, at least for the first few hundred yards of Greenspring Valley.
When the work is completed in late spring or early summer, the bottleneck should be history.
The night the lights went out near Georgia
Something was not right on Interstate 495. An eerie darkness had descended on the Capital Beltway. An unsettling darkness had fallen. A spine-tingling darkness had set in.
It was dark. Get the picture?
"There were so many lights out, there just seemed to be a problem," says Ed Watkins of Reisterstown.
While helping his son, who has a limousine service, Mr. Watkins found himself frequently making runs between Dulles International Airport and Hunt Valley.
After passing the Georgia Avenue exit on the Capital Beltway, he noticed a particularly dim stretch between the Mormon Temple and Interstate 270.
"That's the worst area possible for there to be a problem because of all the bends and curves and merging traffic," Mr. Watkins said. "There must be hundreds of lights out."
More like thousands, according to Tom Hicks, director of the highway administration's office of traffic and safety, which is responsible for the 44 Maryland miles of the Washington beltway.
At one point, Mr. Hicks said, only 20 percent of the thousands and thousands of lights on the beltway were believed to be operating.
The problem was with the contractor the state hired in 1992 to maintain those lights.
The contractor, Simpson Electric of Odenton, wasn't doing the job, and gradually the lights went out. After paying $200,000 on two contracts worth $518,000, the state suspended Simpson.
Joe Tice, president of Simpson, said he believed his company was living up to the terms of its contract but acknowledged that severe financial problems had forced Simpson into Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in November.
The state hired a second company. But that contractor also was not up to the job, Mr. Hicks said.
Finally, in December, a contract was awarded to a third company, Asplundh, and the lights have started to come back on.
A state official said Friday that about three-quarters of the lights are operating and that about 85 percent should shine by the end of this month.
"You shoot to have 95 to 97 percent operational," Mr. Hicks said, but to achieve those numbers the state will have to do more than just replace bulbs. It must also attend to needed cable repairs.
Still, the Capital Beltway seems headed for a brighter future.