Report a Comment

The comments do remind me of a conversation (when I was working for Baltimore County) I had with a colleague who works for the MD Dept. of Planning. He described an ICC planning meeting with his department and MDOT Sec. of the time Robert Flanagan and his people. My colleague and others advocated for the trail, strongly. Flanagan was super pissed. The Dept. of Planning was ordered to back off on the trail at the threat of their jobs.

Secretary Flanagan, like it or not, was under orders from his boss, then-Gov. Bob Ehrlich, to get his administration's highest priority highway project built - or at least to get the environmental impact statement done to a record of decision.

You can be critical of Flanagan for not putting strong emphasis on the ICC trail (in the scheme of things, this multi-user trail is not a very expensive project as compared to a six-lane freeway), but as I suggested above, I believe the blame lies with the staff at the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission in both counties (and their bosses at the respective Planning Boards and County Councils) for not pushing hard for a master-planned transportation improvement) - all the way from Shady Grove to U.S. 1 - which is what the ICC trail was (and presumably still is).

There were also objections to the trail raised by regulatory staff from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - the ACE especially objected to the trail segment between Md. 650 (New Hampshire Avenue) and Old Columbia Pike, across the Paint Branch (of the Anacostia River) watershed.

by C. P. Zilliacus on Jun 29, 2012 6:08 pm • link • report