From what I can see, this list will translate into such things as higher grass and more litter along state highways, longer lines at the MVA and bathrooms at BWI that aren't cleaned quite as frequently. On the other hand, there's probably oother spending in here that won't be missed at all.

Here are some of the specifics, just as the GGovernor's Office described them:

Department of Transportation

The Secretary's Office

• Reduce per diem payments, operating costs for utilities, advertising,
  building maintenance, public service announcements, consultant
  services and contractual services.                                                      $133,500
• InformationTechnology--Reduce maintenance contracts, delay upgrade projects, delay ability to build out additional fiber for MDOT network, reduce training
  opportunities, reduce contractor services for FMIS operations and
  maintenance that mirror State mandated closings, limit funds for travel,
  delay rollout of Clarity application for project management.                  $2,200,000
• State Highway Administration Reduce mowing costs, litter pickup costs, spraying, maintenance,
  sweeping cycles, pavement repair, joint filling, line striping, highway
  lighting maintenance, and consultant services.                                   $14,728,467
• Maryland Port Administration Eliminate clerical PIN, reduce legal support, tuition reimbursements, cell phone costs, travel, motor vehicle maintenance and lease costs,
  advertising, equipment rentals and repairs, janitorial services, security
  services, training, trash removal, software maintenance contracts,
  stevedoring contract, office supplies, and maintenance.                           $ 8,124,553
• Motor Vehicle Administration--Reduce overtime, contractual and temporary staff, telephone costs,postage, equipment repairs, extermination, janitorial, laundry, eliminate
  vehicle replacement, delay central Issuance program, reduce use of
  MSP troopers at select locations, reduce MDP fees for VEIP.                       $4,109,195
• Maryland Aviation Administration--Reduce janitorial, BWI security, consultants, telephone costs, postagecosts, travel, utilities, software purchases, hardware maintenance,
  supplies, subscriptions, dues, rent, grants to non-government entities.        $8,296,217

The Council is also asking the authority to phase in a $3 fee for those who use the tollroad without an E-ZPass -- a charge intended to cover the extra cost of billing vehicles on the basis of license plate photos for use of the tollbooth-free road. On top of that, it wants a subsisized commuter rate that is at odds with the plan to use toll rates to eliminate congestion on the ICC.

These ideas certainly sound good to Montgomery County elected officials because they are nothing more than an added subsidy for use of a road that is already heavily subsidized. The problem, from a Baltimore point of view, is that an additional subsidy for the ICC means it will generate less revenue than expected. That means a greater share of the debt service on its bonds will have to be paid out of some other revenue stream.

There aren't a whole lot of other places for the authority to look for that revenue. Maryland now has seven toll facilities. None is anywhere close to Montgomery County. Except for one, the U.S. 301 bridge over the Potomac River, they are all located entirely or partly in the Baltimore region. (The Bay Bridge, the two Susquehanna River Bridges, the Francis Scott Key Bridge, shown above, and the two Baltimore Harbor tunnels.)

So if the authority gives ICC users a break, it's going to have to do so by socking users of those other facilities just a little harder when the next toll increase comes up in  2011-2012. There's really no way around it: The bond rating agencies are expecting a revenue increase in a certain range. If the authority wimps out about imposing sufficient toll increases to generate that revenue, Maryland risks a credit downgrade. That would cost us all  in future borrowing.

I can understand the Montgomery Council seeking a break for its constituents, who will likely be the most frequent users of the ICC. What I can't understand is why we aren't hearing an outcry from elected officials from the Baltimore region, the Eastern Shore and Southern Maryland warning the authority against shifting ICC costs to the people they represent.

 Users of Baltimore-area toll facilities are already paying a premium on their tolls to help build the ICC. Don't hit us with more of the bill because  the very people who begged the state to build the ICC are now shocked at the price tag.

Sun photo

According to AAA, about 38.4 million Americans will travel more than 50 miles from home between next Wednesday and the Sunday after the hoiliday. Travel by automobile is expected to increase by 2.1 percent to 33.2 milllion.

But air travel is expected to be off by 6.6 percent. Air travel is expected to account for only 6 percent of Thanksgiving travel, continuing a downward trend that has persisted for a decade.

CSX played host Tuesday as up to 150 first responders from fire departments throughout the region took part in drills simulating several disaster scenarios at the railroad's Washington Boulevard rail yard.

A Baltimore Fire Department spokesman, Capt.  Kevin Cartwright, said oorganizers were pleased with the "fluid" response of the multiple agencies that participated in the train wreck simulation.

Firefighterrs fromBaltimore, Anne  Arundel, Howard, Harford, Carroll and Cecil countiies joined thhose from the cities of Baltimore and Annapolis in the practice session. Cartwright said the first responders dealt with scenarios including an engineer trapped in a locomotive who needed extraction, a chlorine leak, a liquid propane gas release and an ethanol spill.

About 150 observers were on hand from the Environmental Protection Agency Region III Emergency Preparedness and Prevention & Hazmat Spills Conference, now taking place at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. Also there was The Sun's Algerina Perna, who took video of the exercise.

Cartwright said the drill went well. "Everyone was pleased -- especially EPA and CSX," he said.

Is your destination someplace truly grueling  to reach at peak times such as Long Island, northern  New Jersey or Connecticut? Or, perhaps, Richmond, Raleigh or Charlotte?

Would you be willing to stay in contact by phone or email and describe your ordeal for this blog and an article in the Baltimore Sun?

We'd like to evaluate the different routes and strategies people can employ when they can't avoid the peak hours. If you're willing to participate, please drop a line to michael.dresser@baltsun.com. Make the subject line Travel so it stands out from the spam? Thanks.

The Dixon administration is expected to bring two contracts before the Board of Estimates Wednesday cementing its 2-year-old accord with CSX under which the railroad will pay roughly three-quarters of the cost of replacing two of the city’s most deteriorated bridges.

After years of wrangling, the city and CSX reached agreement in principle on the formula for paying for the replacement of the Fort Avenue and Sinclair Lane bridges in Oct. 2007. But it has taken two years to work out details.

The delay, according to city deputy transportation director Jamie Kendrick, was the result of “a thousand details and lots of lawyers but other than that it was easy.”

Under the contracts, which CSX has already signed, the railroad will pay 75 percent of the construction costs and 100 percnet of the engineering costs on the Fort Avenue bridge. The city willl contribute the other quarter of the building costs.

That bridge was the subject of public protests by a Locust Point woman named Karen Johns (above), who became well-known in the city as ‘The Bridge Lady.” Johns badgered elected officials to put pressure on CSX to replace the visibly crumbling bridge, which was built in 1920 and scored 36 points out of 100 – a failing grade -- on a recent inspection.

Sun photo/Kim Hairston

The Fort Avenue bridge bridge project, whic has yet to go through engineering, is expected to reach its construction phase in late 2010 or early 2011. Kendrick said the work on the bridge, on the route to Fort McHenry, will be reopened in time for the bicentennial of the War of 1812 in May 2012. Until then, visitors to the fort will have to take a detour.

Kendrick said the city and CSX are currently in negotiations over the railroad’s bridge over the tracks at Sisson Street near Charles Village and one of its crossings of Hanover Street in South Baltimore. The city and railroad are also discussing a series of stone arches on the crosstown Belt Line between Charles Village and Harford Road.

The agreements and the talks represent a sea change in the once-prickly relationship of the city and CSX, which publicly feuded in the aftermath of the 2001 Howard Street Tunnel derailment and fire.

Kendrick credited a change in CSX management’s attitude toward working with local governments.
“This is a whole new approach to doing things than has been the case for many decades,” he said.

Kendrick said Cummings and former Maryland Transportation Secretary John D. Porcari helped Mayor Sheila Dixon persuade CSX to address the bridge issue.

“For years the city has been trying get CSX to the table. It was indeed a convergence of forces that got them there,” Kendrick said.
 

Moody's pointed to the authority's long history of financial stability and to its independent board's ability and willingness  to raise tolls when needed.

In the bond rater's estimation, Maryland tolls remain "relatively low."

The good news: Moody's predicts the authority will be able to keep up its "strong financial profile" and reliable debt service.

The bad news: "Key to the forecast are assumed toll rate increases of 48% in 2012 and 23% in 2014. "

After the experience of going through this week's nor'easter with just one bridge to the mainland, Ocean Mayor Rick Meehan said he's going to ask the State Highway Administration to add a second span to the Route 90 bridge (above).

The current bridge, which feeds into the barrier island at 60th Street, has been shut down last month for emergency repairs (below) to an eroded girder.

Adding a new two-lane bridge to supplement the existing span would be a very expensive project, and given the woes of the state transportation budget, the mayor may have a long wait ahead.

SHA spokesman Dave Buck said there are no plans in the works to add capacity to the Route 90 bridge, which at about 35 years old is a relative youngster in infrastructure terms. Buck noted that Worcester County already has some other big-ticket items higher on its priority list, including the rehabilitation or replacement of the U.S. 50 bridge, which is 66 years old and showing its age. If replacement is the option selected, that could be a $500 million project, he said.

                                                                         State Highway Administration photo                   

At one time you could turn right on red onto northbound Charles from westbound Mount Royal. Now you cannot do that. The two right lanes or so of Charles north of Mount Royal are torn up now with roadwork. But before that happened, the light was changed so that the two lanes of Mount Royal continuing west across Charles get a green light, while the two right-turning lanes still have a red light.

Is it this way because of the construction? Could (it be OK) to turn right on red after a certain time (7 p.m. seems most common)? Could the light be programmed to allow all the traffic to move thru the intersection at some time if it’s not safe to do so earlier in the day? Thanks. Any light you can shed on this will be appreciated.

Those questions were posed to Kathy Chopper, spokeswoman for the city Department of Transportation, who had this explanation:

At one time, motorists were able to make right turns onto Charles from westbound Mount Royal, but that traffic pattern was recently changed.  The City of Baltimore worked with the University to adjust signal timing and eliminate right turns on red at that intersection due to the heavy amount of pedestrian traffic. 

 The right turns on red were eliminated to provide enough time for pedestrians to cross in a safe manner.  These changes were not related to the construction that is taking place in the area.

My question would be how many pedestrians there are to protect around midnight, when my colleage passes through the intersection.

It seems the Montgomery County Council has achieved rare  unanimity in coalescing around an expensive scheme (in the billions though not definitively priced) to add two express toll lanes to Interstate 270 from Shady Grove to Frederick. Pagnucco notes that the idea of a wider I-270 has strong support from elected leaders in Montgomery County and Frederick County.

That should come as no big surprise. Express toll lanes would be a great bargain for residents of those areas. First of all, the tolls collected on I-270 would pay only a fraction of the costs. The up-front costs would probably have to be borne by users of the state's other toll facilities -- who tend to be residents of Maryland jurisdictions other than Montgomery and Frederick.

That's one of many reasons that Pagnucco's link to Baltimore takes you to this blog.

It's time the rest of the state put Montgomery on notice about this project: If you want  it so much, figure out a way to build it without money from the state's other toll facilities. Tolls are already likely to go much higher just to cover existing obligations and more worthy capital projects, and users of the Fort McHenry Tunnel and the Key Bridge aren't going to willingly pay even more for a bay-polluting boondoggle that brings them zero benefit.

Some states have closed stops in order to cut budgets strapped by recession-related revenue declines. Especially hard hit has been Virginia, which closed 19 of its 42 rest stops.

In Maryland, the rest stops along Interstate 70 on South Mountain near the Frederick-Washington county line have been closed for remodeling and will reopen next year. The Bay Country Welcome Center on U.S. 301 in Queen Anne's County has been closed, along with the Sideling Hill Interpretive Center in Western Maryland, but the rest rooms at both facilities remain open. Other rest stops remain open.