Posts about Anne Arundel

According to state employees, the sign came to symbolize a struggle between two schools of thought among traffic engineers: the traditional view that cyclists should ride as far right as practicable, and if that's not safe, stay off the road; and the modern view that cyclists are welcome on all roads, even if that requires riding in the center of the lane.

Within SHA, skeptics became supporters

While gradual, SHA's transformation has been remarkable. In April 2011, its Office of Traffic and Safety announced that SHA would not post any "use full lane" signs (PDF).

Tom Hicks, who was director of the office, explained in June 2011: "We assume that the bicycle requires a 4-foot operating width all the way to the right, while the automobile requires a 10-foot operating width. Drivers may have to move left into the next lane to pass. Potential conflict is increased if the cyclist moves farther to the left."

With some encouragement from MDOT Secretary Beverly Swaim-Staley, a few months later, Mr. Hicks became a strong supporter of Maryland's yellow "use full lane" warning sign. "We think that this sign will be very useful on some highways," he told me. "I knew there was a solution in there somewhere." Last week, SHA posted the white rectangular version of the sign on MD-193, MD-212, MD-450, MD-500, and MD-704, which suggests that Cedric Ward, his successor, may prefer that version of the sign, which is officially known as "R4‑11".

Once the guidance on these signs is refined and fully implemented, there will be no ambiguity on state highways about where a bicyclist is assumed to ride.

Local governments have different stances

Cities have been most eager to use the signs. Laurel has the white rectangular signs and sharrows as part of a bike route parallel to US-1, and the city engineer endorsed placement of the yellow warning sign along US-1. The City of Baltimore uses the R4-11 signs on bicycle boulevards. Across the state line, the District of Columbia and Arlington (which operates its own roads) have used the R4-11 sign for more than a year.

Montgomery County has not posted any "use full lane" signs yet, but it intends to follow the approach described in the recent SHA guidance for the sign (PDF), according to Fred Lees, the county's chief of traffic engineering studies. Anne Arundel plans to limit the signs to a few cases where citizens report hazards caused by drivers not expecting to see cyclists using the full lane. "We already have 70,000 signs on county roads. Signs that merely tell people the law should not be needed," says James Schroll, the chief traffic engineer for Anne Arundel County. "There are better ways to inform residents that the law allows cyclists to take the lane."

Prince George's County still has the ambivalence about bicycling that SHA had in the past. Haitham Hijazi, Director of the Department of Public Works and Transportation (DPW&T) says that the County will use the R4-11 signs along some roads that have at least two lanes in each direction.

But the county has rejected requests to post those signs on two-lane roads. In a meeting with WABA, DPW&T explained its reasoning:

DPW&T believes that signs and pavement markings increase its liability because doing so would imply endorsement of riding those roads. Today, cyclists ride those roads at their own risk. The County has never stated that all of its roads are part of the cycling transportation network. Installing signs and pavement markings would in effect endorse biking on those roads, making the county liable.

In rejecting a request for a sign on Church Road, where drivers regularly honk at cyclists using full lane, DPW&T traffic engineer Cipriana Thompson said that "this is a use-full-lane situation," but disputed the research that R4-11 signs increase safety. Others at DPW&T suggest that cyclists who use the full lane do so for political reasons, rather than their own safety:

DPW&T cares about public safety and is concerned when members of the community take safety lightly or knowingly commit acts of high-risk behavior as a mechanism to achieve a public action.

Advocates and officials seek common ground

WABA and other advocates disagree with the view that cyclists should not ride on 2‑lane roads that are too narrow to share. But rather than debate the point, they plan to work with Hijazi on specific roads that he is willing to improve. Councilman Eric Olson (D‑College Park) supports a pragmatic approach: "I look forward to working with DPW&T and the bicycle community on the new signs."

The American Automobile Association (AAA) is also supportive. John Townsend of AAA Mid-Atlantic, who lives in Prince George's County, has seen first-hand the need for better signage. "When I drive to church on Sunday morning, I see a lot of bicyclists on Lottsford Vista Road," he observes.

"That road has been widened in some places, but parts are still narrow, and cyclists move into the lane there. We already have deer warning signs, so surely we should have signs to warn about vulnerable people in the roadway."

The state would be picking up a large portion of the inflated tab. Will the Governor merely provide funds to enable local decision-making at its worst, or will he lead these counties to build the better, lower-cost trail that, for a variety of institutional reasons, they are unable to pursue on their own?

The Washington, Baltimore, and Annapolis Trail runs along the right of way of the old railroad of the same name from Lanham to the Patuxent River in Prince George's County, a distance of about 6 miles. One mile northeast of the Patuxent, the trail picks up again and continues for 4 miles to Odenton. From there, you can take mostly local streets to connect to the BWI Airport and Trail.

Anne Arundel County is preparing to build a trail along the South Shore Line of the old WB&A railroad from the eastern end of the WB&A trail to Annapolis. Meanwhile, Prince George's County plans to build a trail from the western end of the WB&A Trail to Bladensburg and the Anacostia River Trail. Building the connection over the Patuxent River to connect the two segments of the WB&A Trail is thus the highest priority in the Missing Links Program at the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT).

The land between the two trail segments is undeveloped. A single developer owns the old railbed for about half the distance, and the land next to the railroad right of way for the other half. As part of the permit process for the planned Preserve at Two Rivers, Anne Arundel County could easily extend the trail in a straight line to the water's edge.

Instead, the County wants the developer to build a winding detour that would reach the Patuxent River on the Anne Arundel side about a mile north of where the trail currently reaches the river on the Prince George's side. Under the proposed site plan, the development will also place homes atop the old right of way, and thereby ensure that a straight trail is never built.

Railroads were always good at finding the route with the most favorable topography. Thus, the old railbed would provide a gradual slope down to the river. The detour would send the trail first up a small hill, then down a steep incline toward the river.

The route down to the river is so steep it requires several switchbacks. According to officials who attended a meeting on the subject in September, the turns are so sharp that the maximum safe speed is 7 mph, and the steep slopes do not comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Then, at the bottom of the hill, the detour trail would have to cross several hundred feet of floodplain wetlands before reaching the river.

Why does Anne Arundel County prefer a costly detour that seriously degrades the quality of the trail? I have been unable to find any official willing to offer a clear rationale.

According to Ken Alban, Chief of Capital Projects for the parks department, the county is pursuing the detour because a decision was made to pursue the detour years ago, before he took his position. "I have many projects and I cannot be continually revisiting the rationale behind each one, or nothing would ever get built," he says.

The detour alignment was originally proposed at the turn of the century by Buz Meyer, who owned the land along the Patuxent River immediately southeast of the railbed. Both the County and Meyer claimed ownership of the railbed itself.

Several officials who were with the county ten years ago told me that the decision to pursue the detour was made around 2001 by then-County Executive Janet Owens. Until then, the County had planned to run the trail on the right of way, but it eventually conceded that the right-of-way within about 1000 feet of the river was owned by Meyer.

Why didn't the county simply move the trail alignment by about 50 feet from the old roadbed to the adjacent parcel to the northwest? Three county officials told me that Meyer did not want the trail near his land because of the risk of stray bullets from his property, which was used for hunting and firearms training.

Apparently the detour was the only alternative in 2001. But circumstances have changed. A developer now owns the land northwest of the railbed. And Buz Meyer died recently. His son, Andrew Meyer, told me that he opposes the trail being on his property, but that he does not care if a trail is on the adjacent parcel, as long as people do not trespass on his land.

A fence could easily be built. In fact, a high wall was built to stop bullets and trespassing where the WB&A Trail runs along the grounds of the Berwyn Rod and Gun Club in Bowie.

Mr. Alban asked me why cyclists would want this more direct route. I told him it would allow people to arrive at their destination 10 minutes sooner. He told me he was surprised: "No one has ever suggested to me that this trail will be used for transportation," he said. "I doubt that people will use this trail for commuting."

Prince George's County has consistently favored the direct trail and opposed the detour since 2001, when then-county executive Wayne Curry sent Owens a letter explaining the the County's position.

A few years ago, Prince George's added a ½-mile segment extending the trail to the water's edge, which would be superfluous if the detour trail was built. County park and planning staff continue to favor the direct connection. But after a decade, they have also become pessimistic about whether it will ever be completed. So they are building a short trail along another old rail spur that would facilitate the detour, should it become the only option.

State officials almost universally are skeptical about the detour, but feel that there is nothing they can do even though the prospect of state funds is driving the process. Steve Carr of the Department of Natural Resources told Maryland's Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee that because the detour runs through wetlands in a floodplain, the permit process could take years.

I asked whether the state can do a complete alternatives analysis and pick the optimal route in a public process. "If and when the state conducts a design study, it can conduct an alternatives analysis," said Dustin Kuzan, the state's bicycle and pedestrian coordinator.

"But what if Anne Arundel County and the planned development make the direct route far more costly before that study begins," I asked. "We may not fund the best option, but the state can not make local land use decisions," he said.

Maryland is thinking of funding a wasteful detour bridge that makes no sense today, because the detour was the only practical alternative ten years ago. Middle management apparently lacks authority or incentive to pursue the more valuable and lower-cost alignment. MDOT needs leadership from Governor O'Malley to ensure the state doesn't waste money building an inferior trail.

The county transportation officials who designed this street to be so dangerous, the AJC reporter who pointed out she hadn't been charged, the prosecutors who overcharged the case, and the jurors who had never taken a public bus all showed no remorse for encouraging a situation where people have to break laws and put themselves in dangerous situations just to travel to work and shop.

A similar windshield perspective is on display in a recent Anne Arundel crash. A driver fatally hit Alex Canales Hernandez and, as in Nelson's case, left the scene. Also like Nelson's, it happened on a busy arterial street that's been designed for maximum vehicle speeds and not for bicycle or pedestrian safety.

Anne Arundel police spokesperson Justin Mulcahy told the Maryland Gazette, "Certain stretches of roads should really be just for vehicles." He also encouraged cyclists, pedestrians, and drivers all to pay attention and make eye contact.

Setting aside the fact that "vehicles" include bicycles, certain stretches of road are just for motor vehicles, like freeways. But those always coexist with networks of other roads that can potentially serve all modes. In most suburban areas like Cobb County, Georgia and Anne Arundel County, Maryland, designers have often made local arterial roads more freeway-like without actually providing for safe bicycle and pedestrian alternatives.

Bus stops become tiny roadside perches mere feet from speeding traffic with few or no places to cross, and people trying to get around without a car, sometimes because they can't afford one, have to take their lives into their hands and risk being blamed when anything goes wrong.

Not only do rude commenters and commentators blame these victims, but so do some police and callous spokespeople like Mulcahy or Jonathan Perok of Prince William, who blamed a pedestrian for getting killed in Dumfries who turned out to be a VDOT contractor there to install a traffic signal.

Jay Mallin made a great video in response to a similar Prince William incident that's equally relevant to Raquel Nelson's and Alex Canales Hernandez's cases. It's worth rewatching:

Wired also wrote today about a new report (PDF) framing transportation as a civil rights issue:

According to the report, the average cost of owning a car is just shy of $9,500. That may not sound like much until you realize the federal poverty level is $22,350 for a family of four. One-third of low-income African-American households do not have access to an automobile. That figure is 25 percent among low-income Latino families and 12.1 percent for whites. Racial minorities are four times more likely than whites to use public transit to get to work.

Yet the federal government allocates 80 percent of its transportation funding to highways.

"This is the civil rights dilemma: Our laws purport to level the playing field, but our transportation choices have effectively barred millions of people from accessing it," the report states. "Traditional nondiscrimination protections cannot protect people for whom opportunities are literally out of reach."

The report couldn't be more timely. Sarah Goodyear asks, could the intense media coverage of this issue mean that society is ready to start taking pedestrian rights more seriously?

We worked in the also automobile-centric community of Columbia, which we drove to daily. Cars were as much a part of our lives as food and water.

I ended up getting a job in downtown DC, which was precisely the moment when both of our lives changed. We'd never been too familiar with the DC area, so we started to explore the neighborhoods after work every day.

We were especially struck by downtown Silver Spring, which seemed vibrant and diverse beyond anything we were used to in Anne Arundel County. The mix of proximity to DC (and our families in central Maryland) and the affordability, combined with the transit options to downtown DC sealed the deal.

As soon as we were financially established enough to make the leap, we found an apartment right downtown in Silver Spring, a block from the Metro.

We consolidated our cars, and own only one now. We started taking Metrorail to work (my girlfriend got a job downtown as well), but soon found the bus routes and exploited them as well. It wasn't long before we started thinking of the possibility of cycling to our jobs.

After finding that we could easily cycle to work, we purchased a couple of road bikes. Now, we each have four different modes to choose from (rail, bus, bike, or car) any particular day. I'd say that any given week, my choices are almost evenly distributed between the first three.

The first time I rode my route to work (which involves going around Walter Reed then down 14th street, utilizing the bike lanes), I almost threw up from exaustion. Now, a year and a half later, the commute barely fazes me, and I'm in the best shape I've ever been in. My girlfriend would easily state the same about herself. (She uses the Capital Crescent trail).

I couldn't have imagined the change my life would take just a few years ago. My car sits in my apartment's garage, barely getting any use at all. When once I saw a car as an indelible, constant part of every day life, kind of like underwear, or music, I now could never see myself living in an area that required me to use it in order to get the groceries, go to work, see a movie, or any of the countless other things that I can walk to in my immediate neighborhood.

Your blog embodies the values that I now hold. I just wanted to state my appreciation for your mission, and hopefully my story will play itself out again and again as people in situations similar to ours realize that car dependency is a burden.

Thanks for your time. It's Friday night, and my neighborhood beckons!

David Fronapfel
Silver Spring

MARC trains could leave Union Station and follow the Camden Line to Savage, where half of the trains would continue along the current Camden Line, and the other half turn onto a spur going eastward along MD-32. The spur would connect to the Penn Line at Odenton and continue to Baltimore and beyond. Stops along the way could include National Business Park, NSA, and the Fort Meade main gate. New tracks would be about six and a half miles long. Portions could easily be constructed along defunct railroad rights-of-way.

The Camden Line, which runs along Route 1 all the way from DC to Baltimore, has several stations including Laurel, Muirkirk, and Riverdale Park which are struggling to implement transit-oriented development. The Camden Line, however, has by far the lowest level of service on the system, and that will still be the case when MARC's 2035 plan is complete. A Meade connection could allow more service on the southern half of the Camden Line, which could strengthen those TOD projects.

Best of all, this connection would bring a viable transit alternative to a growing facility with worsening traffic and catastrophic parking problems. It would bring regular, high capacity transit at a minimal infrastructure investment.

The MARC Brunswick line also duplicates the part of the western branch of the Red Line. Twinbrook, Rockville, and Shady Grove are at similar distances from downtown as Laurel and Fort Meade. It would be far cheaper to shut down these three stations and operate MARC only, but there are no calls for that. MARC began operations in 1983, whereas these Metro stations opened after MARC began service on the corridor. And MARC's Brunswick Line offers more service than the Camden Line. Why is this sort of transit set-up acceptable in Montgomery County, but not Prince George's? Nowhere along that corridor is there a concentration of jobs like there is at Fort Meade.

Fort Meade would never allow a Metro station for security reasons.

Precedent has certainly been set for this with the heavily-used Metro station underneath the Pentagon. There are also proposals to extend the Blue or Yellow Line to Fort Belvoir. The new streetcars will serve Bolling AFB. I find it hard to believe that a transit station would be considered more dangerous than the thousands of cars entering and exiting the base every day.

Fort Meade would not generate the ridership to warrant a dedicated full service transit station.

Fort Meade is currently the largest job center in the State of Maryland, and after Tysons Corner and Downtown Washington, the third largest in the region. It is also the fastest growing. According to the 2000 James Bamford book Body of Secrets, the NSA has 30,000 employees. Most of those are at the Fort Meade facility, and it is safe to assume that those numbers have increased greatly since Bamford's pre-9/11 book was published. The hundreds of acres of parking on the NSA campus are filled to the brim on even an average workday. Certainly a direct-service transit station would be a welcome relief.

What about a light rail line connecting Columbia and Annapolis to MARC and Fort Meade?

It would probably be a good compliment to a Metro Line and MARC service, much like the Corridor Cities Transitway proposal would compliment existing Metro and MARC service in Rockville/Gaithersburg. It would not induce transit-oriented development along Route 1, and it would not improve Fort Meade's connectivity to other defense employment centers as much as the Green Line Extension. Furthermore, light rail would require a transfer for commuters coming from Baltimore and Washington, which is known to deter transit ridership.

Fort Meade is too far from the city center to warrant Metro service.

Compare:

• The final station on the Silver Line, VA Route 772, is 30 track miles from Metro Center and 27 miles from the transfer at Rosslyn.
  
• On the Red Line, Shady Grove station is 19 track miles from Metro Center, which is the closest transfer station. This does not take into account ACT's proposal to extend the Red Line 7 miles to Germantown.
  
• Franconia to Metro Center on the Blue Line is 19 miles, and Virginia is proposing extensions several miles further south and west.
  
• The Odenton Green Line station would be 29½ track miles from Gallery Place, 24½ from the transfer at Ft. Totten. If the line were to only go to Laurel (the extent of the proposal in the county's transportation plan), subtract 10 miles. But in my opinion, if the line were to go all the way to Laurel, it may as well go those last few miles for the sake of servicing a job center that rivals Tysons Corner in size and importance.

This corridor has the potential to grow Washington's urban fabric into Baltimore's urban fabric. This is a good thing. If Metro should extend 30 miles outside the center of the city in any direction, it should be towards Baltimore, its most prominent neighbor, the largest population and economic center in the state of Maryland, and the next big city along the Northeast corridor. The Silver Line, Red Line, and Blue Line punch into areas that 20 years ago had little beyond them other than farms. They're more like "greenfield" lines, whereas this Green Line Extension is more like a "brownfield line" repurposing existing development in a more transit friendly manner.

Fort Meade would be better served by Baltimore public transportation.

Debatable. Fort Meade would best be served by BOTH transportation systems. However, Fort Meade is a large government facility with mostly government-related jobs in its vicinity. Government, of course, is the leading "industry" of Washington, DC. Especially government defense. Jobs at Fort Meade are more closely related to jobs in the DC area than the Baltimore area for the most part. It makes more sense for a DC system to directly service this bustling defense job center. Of course, I certainly wouldn't object MTA light rail or rapid transit eventually serving the base as well.

Most employees at Fort Meade live in Howard and Anne Arundel Counties and would not benefit from the new transit line.

Anecdotally, I have several friends who "reverse commute" from Capitol Hill, Silver Spring, and Arlington to Fort Meade. Many also commute from Federal Hill and Canton up in Baltimore. But if our mass transit systems are to grow together, Fort Meade would be an ideal location, directly in between the downtowns of DC and Baltimore. Having worked at Fort Meade for 8 years, I've noticed that newer, younger employees tend to live closer to the cities and older employees settled in Howard and Anne Arundel. If city-dwelling youngsters choose to remain close to DC and Baltimore as the older "car generation" employees retire, this trend towards the cities will obviously increase over time. More importantly, if the base were directly served by mass transit, it stands to reason that new and existing employees would move to areas along the route that serves the base, much like we can expect workers at Tysons Corner to move toward areas closer to the Silver Line once it opens.

This area is different from Tysons Corner because it is further away from the city, and Tysons isn't served by any rail service at all.

As mentioned above, Tysons Corner is more closely served by Metro than Fort Meade is served by MARC. True, Tysons is closer to DC, but Fort Meade lies along the Northeast Corridor, arguably the most important corridor extending from Washington, DC. And Fort Meade is still pretty close to both DC and Baltimore, which, as mentioned above, makes it a logical place for Baltimore and Washington's transit systems to meet. Furthermore, job centers in Montgomery County along the western Red Line lie further outside the Beltway than Tysons and those areas are served by both Metro and MARC.

This area is different from the western Red Line Corridor because that area is a growing job center.

Fort Meade is in fact a growing job center. The 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) will be moving 5,700 government jobs to Fort Meade. These will mostly be defense-related jobs that could benefit greatly from having a single-mode transit connection to other defense/government job centers in the DC area, such as the Pentagon, Fort Belvoir, Bethesda Medical Center, and Andrews AFB. Additionally, many stations on the western Red Line are used to connect into points south, hence there is little "reverse commuting" to Rockville and Gaithersburg. On the other hand, a job center at the end of the Green Line could certainly induce transit use in both directions during the rush hours.

The real purpose for the line is to bring transit to Kingdon Gould III's Konterra development. I don't want my tax dollars going toward giving a rich guy a bigger return on his investment.

It's very likely that pro-Konterra lobbyists pushed to include this measure in the Prince George's County Transportation Plan (1, 2). The plan's alignment, however, does not run through Konterra. It is about a mile from the planned town center. If a Metro station opens adjacent to the existing Muirkirk MARC station, perhaps it could induce better land use on the mile of office parks that separate the two locations. And even if it makes Mr. Gould a little richer, more efficient land use benefits a lot of people, not just the land owner.

Route 1 is not conducive to transit oriented development.

The Route 1 corridor is a commodity. From Mount Rainier to Laurel it is mostly traditionally-laid-out towns and neighborhoods. The stretch north of the Beltway lies directly between 1-95 and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, which could act act as natural growth boundaries for development. Route 1 has a Main Street feel in Mount Rainier, Hyattsville, and parts of College Park, then it deteriorates to strip malls until Laurel, where it becomes more of a Main Street again. Metro stations could induce growth that will tie all that good urbanism together, creating a giant Main Street from the DC line to the Patuxent River and perhaps a little beyond.

Laurel is a city of 20,000 people, too small and out-of-the-way to warrant Metro.

Commenter David C brought this up, comparing the size of Laurel to that of Bowie and suggesting extending the Blue Line through Bowie instead of the Green through Laurel. Incorporated Laurel proper was estimated in 2007 as having a population of about 21,600 compared to Bowie, which has over 50,000. But Bowie is far more spread out than Laurel because it has been annexing sprawling residential developments for decades. If Laurel City were to annex every community that had a Laurel zip code, its population would be close to 90,000 in a size roughly the same as incorporated Bowie. Laurel is a dense, centralized municipality that has been taking progressive transportation measures and has the potential to grow around a Metro station probably faster than anywhere else in Prince George's County. But like Kensington in Montgomery County, Laurel has not been able to induce as much transit-oriented development that the town could potentially support because it has a MARC station, not a Metro station. Bowie, on the other hand, is far more car-oriented, decentralized and sprawling. Laurel was on the radar to get a service when the plan for Metro was conceived. in the '60's, certainly it hasn't diminished in importance since then.

MARC can induce transit oriented development along Route 1.

Again, the Penn Line currently has higher ridership than the Camden Line will have in 2035 if all the improvements are made to the line. Nowhere on the Penn Line supports strong transit-oriented development without a Metro station there, not even Penn Station in downtown Baltimore. This is not an anomaly. Transit-oriented development has not occurred very much near standalone MARC stations.

Prince George's County has not proven that it can grow in a transit-friendly way around Metro stations.

This is true. Prince George's County has not implemented TOD well at any of the 15 Metro stations currently operating in the county. Many of the stations, however, are relatively new. All of the Green Line and the last two stations on the Blue Line have opened in the last 10 years, and good TOD takes time. Gallery Place/Chinatown was empty buildings and warehouses not too long ago. But the fact remains, Prince George's County has been slow moving on progressive development around transit. Fairfax County has notproven much better though, and yet the Silver Line is still being constructed largely there with bits in super-sprawly Loudon County

Prince George's County has initiatives (PDF) to improve land use around Metro, and the future looks good at stations like Suitland, Branch Avenue, New Carrollton (pdf), Capitol Heights (pdf), Addison Road, West Hyattsville, Prince George's Plaza, and Greenbelt. The county's development policies certainly are not the best, but they are progressively improving implementation of transit-oriented development.

Okay, fine. But it's too expensive.

No doubt any extension of Metro will cost billions of dollars. In Prince George's County, unfortunately, the many highway additions outlined by the Transportation Plan will be competing for that money. But "too expensive" almost kept the Orange Line out from under Wilson Boulevard and instead in the median of I-66. It very well may have kept the Silver Line from getting built. If Fort Meade is a job center with the size and importance comparable to Tyson's Corner, it is worth the investment.

Will it get built? Who knows. Should it be prioritized over other Metro expansions that could increase core capacity? Certainly not. But dismissing this plan because it is far out there, expensive, or could be served by inferior methods is a mistake. More importantly, Prince George's County has finally taken progressive stances to promote mass transit. Arguing it down is the quickest way to send that investment to another highway widening in a county notorious for dangerous pedestrian conditions and high rates of traffic deaths. As commenter Jasper pointed out, transit advocates ought to unite behind mass transit expansion, lest proposals like these be dropped for yet more highways.

• Beltsville (Baltimore Avenue and Powder Mill Road)
  
• Muirkirk/Konterra (Baltimore Avenue at Muirkirk Road)
  
• Laurel Lakes (Cherry Lane between Baltimore Avenue and MD 197)
  
• Laurel (Main Street at First Street)
  
• Savage/Annapolis Junction (Brock Bridge Road at Dorsey Run Road)
  
• National Business Park (MD 32 and National Business Pkwy)
  
• National Security Agency (MD 32 and Canine Road)
  
• Fort Meade Main Gate (MD 32 and Mapes Road)
  
• Odenton Town Center (Odenton Road and Morgan Drive)

Fort Meade is the largest job center in the state of Maryland, and it is currently unserved by transit. A Green Line extension would enable reverse commutes from Washington, DC and the Route 1 corridor while facilitating transit-oriented development along Route 1.

Servicing Fort Meade also would meet some of the transportation challenges presented by BRAC's relocation of 5,700 jobs to Fort Meade. Metro access to the base's facilities would eliminate the need for massive highway widening around this job center. The existing transit on the corridor, the MARC Camden Line, suffers from poor service because it shares tracks with the CSX freight trains, does not serve Fort Meade, and has not induced any TOD. This alignment would most likely overcome those shortcomings and better integrate northeastern Prince George's County into the urban fabric of the DC metropolitan area.

Cross-posted on Imagine, DC.