Last month, before taking a vacation of almost three weeks, I noticed a large pothole smack in the middle of one of the left-turn lanes of Conway Street at South Charles Street - right across from the Sheraton Hotel.
It would have been easy to call 311 and report it, but the devil in me wanted to see whether Mayor Sheila Dixon or anyone else in her administration would fix it in the intervening weeks. After all, it was the kind of blemish on the southern gateway to the Inner Harbor that William Donald Schaefer, in his mayoral days, would have noticed before it reached a quarter of its current size. To say he would have pitched a fit is putting it mildly.
But times have changed. When I returned to work last week, that same pothole was waiting to greet me like an old pal - untouched by asphalt and deeper than ever. Turn left onto Charles at your own risk.
That pothole, and the overall sorry state of Conway Street, came to mind when a report crossed my desk from TRIP, a nonprofit research group on highway issues.
That study ranked the Baltimore metropolitan area ninth from the bottom among U.S. regions of more than 500,000 people in the percentage of major roads and highways with substandard pavement.
We could look at this in a glass-half-full kind of way. After all, that means eight other metro regions performed worse than Baltimore. If Baltimore could somehow manage to come in ninth from the bottom in its homicide rate this year, there would likely be dancing in the streets (at least until gunfire broke out).
But it's hard to find too much that is positive when 42 percent of major roads are rated as rough rides. Sure, it's better than No. 1 Los Angeles, where 65 percent of roads are falling apart, but scoring 58 percent right gets you an F in most schools.
Local transportation officials could take some consolation in the fact that the region didn't make the top 10 in TRIP's calculation of how much extra money local motorists have to shell out in vehicle maintenance as a result of poor road conditions. Local vehicle owners, faced with average annual costs of $586, might not feel quite as comforted to come in 12th.
The rankings were based on data compiled by the federal government in 2006.
If you're into pointing fingers, you have a selection of potential culprits. For eight years, Gov. Parris N. Glendening refused to expend any political capital on raising transportation revenue. Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. presided over several years of tight budgets during the post-Sept. 11 downturn. One of the ways he closed the gap was to cut highway money to local jurisdictions.
Still, Ehrlich deserves credit for raising more than $200 million a year in transportation money in 2004 - money that might not have kicked in soon enough to alleviate the conditions found in the TRIP survey.
If it's Gov. Martin O'Malley you dislike, you could blame him for the condition of city streets when he was mayor. But, then again, he was on the receiving end of two years of state cuts.
Rather than pin the blame on one official or another, it might be best to take the survey as a lesson in Government 101: Cuts in basic maintenance inevitably have consequences. What you save in taxes from squeezing spending on roads, you may end up paying in mechanic's bills.
The region's woes reflect a national trend. According to the TRIP report, all levels of government in the Unites States are spending $11.8 billion a year to maintain urban roads and highways. Sounds impressive until you consider that the federal Department of Transportation estimates that $18.4 billion a year is needed to maintain this infrastructure in its current condition. To actually improve the condition of metropolitan roads and highways would cost $26.8 billion a year, according to the department.
And, oh, that doesn't include bridges.
Fortunately, there are indications the region might fare better the next time TRIP comes calling. At O'Malley's request, the General Assembly increased transportation revenues by more than $400 million during last year's special session. That'll buy some asphalt for the roads.
The TRIP study doesn't break down the problems by jurisdiction, but the roughest rides appear to have cropped up on local roads. Valerie Burnette Edgar, a spokeswoman for the State Highway Administration, said 80 percent of that agency's roads - 590 miles out of the 1,250 TRIP looked at - were in good condition.
It's no secret that Baltimore City provides some of the roughest-riding roads in the region. But even there, the post-survey signs are positive.
According to Margaret Martin, the city Transportation Department's chief of engineering and construction, Baltimore had been clunking along on road projects - repaving about 80 lane-miles a year - before receiving a cash infusion in recent years.
Martin said the city stepped up its resurfacing effort last year - completing 139 lane-miles as part of Operation Orange Cone. She put this year's goal at 200.
Some of the results can already be seen. Baltimore Street downtown has a lovely new surface. We at The Sun certainly appreciate the smoother ride on Calvert and Centre streets.
But before we throw any more bouquets in Mayor Dixon's direction, it would be nice to see her pitch a Schaefer-esque fit and get that Conway Street pothole fixed.
gettingthere@baltsun.com