"Heavy Traffic"

I have come to accept that my fellow locals and I are more to blame for our area's traffic problems than beachgoers or politicians.  For example:

One exasperated Water's Edge resident wrote a letter to this newspaper bemoaning traffic jams.  Yet this resident built a home in a community recently developed despite concerns about additional environmental harm, school overcrowding and traffic that it would create.

Local resident and business advocate Bill Badger was recently quoted (The Capital, Sept. 3) celebrating how the widening of Route 2 in Edgewater will serve as a catalyst for an even greater development explosion.

A vocal group of Severna Park residents lobbied and received a new road to alleviate traffic on Severna Park's Benfield Road.  That new road which runs through (and over) some long-existing Millersville and Pasadena communities, has done little to alleviate traffic and, indeed, may cause it to worsen because of the rampant development sprouting along it.
 
Incredibly, a person at the office of County Councilman Catherine Vitale, R-Severna Park, told me that none of these new road advocates has called her office in opposition to a proposed development to be squeezed into the last forested area along Severna Park's traffic-choked Benfield.

We need to accept that the current traffic mess stems from our own acts of selling land to developers, sitting idly by while new development continues to run rampant, and demanding new or wider roads without adequately fighting the development explosions that occur along these new roads.
 
If you and I begin carpooling or taking public transportation, support down-zoning, make our voices heard more often at development hearings, and hold elected officials accountable on Election Day, we might become a part of the traffic solution rather than continue to contribute to the problem.

Jeffrey Schomig
Arnold

Published September 29, 2002, The Capital, Annapolis, Md. 
Copyright © 2002 The The Capital, Annapolis, Md.