In addition to the well-publicized maintenance work the Maryland Transportation Authority just completed on the Hatem Bridge, the agency recently paid for another road project just outside its own local office inCecil County.
The MdTA spent $210,000 to put new blacktop down on the roughly 0.6-mile stretch of Turnpike Drive in Perryville.
The small service road runs parallel to I-95 and leads only to the MdTA administrative building and Maryland State Police JFK Barrack.
The road also is separate from the off-ramp used by trucks to access the weigh station at I-95, which gets significant traffic.
Turnpike Drive seemed fairly smooth and free of any holes or obvious damage, but Kelly Melhem, an MdTA spokeswoman, said the road needed to be repaved.
"The last time it had been paved was 15 years ago," she said. "It had been cracking, it was deteriorating and starting to show its age."
Although the service road receives minimal traffic, it consists of two lanes and parts of it were repaved to be somewhat wider and have something of a shoulder.
The newly paved road has two 10-foot-wide lanes, with two shoulders of 10 feet and 4 feet closer to the intersection of Route 222.
Melhem said besides MdTA and state police employees, the road is used by emergency personnel, contractors, trucks that get impounded and people making deliveries.
"There is more activity beyond just our employees," she said.
The project was completed about three weeks ago.
The MdTA has been criticized by area residents and elected officials lately for using toll revenues to pay for its eight bridges, tunnels and a turnpike, including about $1.23 billion toward the new InterCounty Connector inMontgomery County.
Melhem said toll revenue was used to pay for the Turnpike Drive repaving, as it would be for any facility maintenance at MdTA administration buildings.
The organization was set to spend $107 million on minor capital projects this year.
That includes $60,563 for improvements at Route 24 in Bel Air, between the I-95 interchange and the Route 924 junction, $6,274 to renovate the Maryland House and Chesapeake House travel plazas and $1,917 to improve weigh station signs at Perryville.