Poll: Should MD 32 Expand to Four Lanes Through Clarksville?
A recent fatal accident has brought the stretch of road between I-70 and 108 in Clarksville under examination.
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After an Ellicott City man was killed in a fatal accident on Route 32 in Clarksville on Nov. 13 the safety of the high speed, two lane road has been called into question.
Currently the stretch of road where the fatal accident occurred is a two-lane road that experiences traffic during rush hour.
On Nov. 13, the fatal accident was caused by the driver of a flatbed truck losing control of the vehicle while driving southbound, skidding into the northbound lane and striking a Jeep driven by an Ellicott City man who later died at the hospital, according to police.
A Maryland State Highway Administration spokesperson said officials are still examining the circumstances surrounding the crash to determine exactly what happened.
In 2004, a group of graduate students at UMBC conducted an in-depth study of the stretch of road where the fatal accident occurred—the approximately 5 mile route between 108 in Clarksville and Tridelphia Road in Glenelg.
In the study, the students grappled with two lines of thought. One was the State Highway Administration’s recommendation in a planning report that the road be widened to four lanes. The other, championed by environmental and community groups, believed that widening the road would cause more growth in the rural western part of the county. The students estimated the cost of widening the road to four lanes at $220 million over 10 years.
The students noted in their study that safety data on the road showed there were approximately 125.9 accidents per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT) compared to the state average of 100.1 accidents per 100 VMT.
Back then, the road wasn’t significantly more dangerous than other roads, but at the time, the statewide average for a four-lane road was 38.5 accidents for every 100 million VMT.
To this day, the concerns over growth have kept the stretch of road from being built into four lanes, according to Jane Wagner, the project manager overseeing the development of the road for the Maryland State Highway Administration.
A 1994 proposal to expand the road to four lanes, create new interchanges at several exits and build a 34-foot median to divide the highway, left the planning stage in 2012, according to the SHA website. However, the full build project is currently on-hold, with only the interchanges being constructed now, according to Wagner.
“There was more public outcry that didn’t think [four lanes] was necessary,” said Wagner. “They saw it as fueling development.”
In 1996, Carroll County planners called the development of Route 32 vital for the county’s economic development hopes, according to the Baltimore Sun, but by 2000, opposition in Howard County had become so fierce to the road-widening that a panel to discuss how best to do it was forced to meet in closed sessions due to public outrage at the meetings, according to the Sun.
According to a public hearing transcript posted on the SHA website, dozens of people came out to a public hearing testimony to testify against the plan to expand the highway back in 1999.
"As a group we have for 2 1/2 years been opposing and have come again tonight to ardently oppose the mammoth freeway being presented with this plan," said Debbie Issy, who identified herself as the president of the Citizens Alliance for Rural Preservation, according to the public hearing transcript.
Donald Norris, chairman of the Department of Public Policy at UMBC, was the advisor to the students who wrote the Route 32 study. He’s also a Howard County resident who occasionally travels the road. He said he often experiences congestion on the road during rush hour and addressed the fatal accident.
“It was just a matter of time before something like that happened,” said Norris. “If [the government] values safety and traffic flow, they’ll value four lanes.”
He noted his students laid out both options, the first being the benefits of four lanes to improve safety and traffic flow, the second being two lanes with improved interchanges to control sprawl and improve the environment.
“My personal view is that it should have been four-laned a long time ago,” said Norris.
Weigh in on our poll or in comments: Should the road be widened?
williams
5:04 pm on Tuesday, November 20, 2012
make it a toll road
Michael
12:55 am on Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Rt. 32 is already 4 lanes through Clarksville.....it's going north to Rt. 144 in West Friendship that's the problem. Traffic is ridiculously heavy, especially at rush hour, for a two-lane road. My understanding is that it is supposed to be 4-lanes all the way from the Baltimore-Washington Parkway to I-70. My guess is that Gov. O'Malley used all the Stimulus "road construction" funding he received on other pet projects.
Matt M
12:55 am on Wednesday, November 21, 2012
As soon as I read the term "mammoth" to describe a 4 lane road I knew where the extremism on this issue was. Is Route 29 a "mammoth" freeway? Ha!
Frank
12:55 am on Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Do you mean the I-70 Frederick exit?. 32 doesn't go to Frederick.
Matthew Kircher
12:55 am on Wednesday, November 21, 2012
I'm fortunate enough that my regular commute only involves the parts of rt 32 that are an actual expressway. However, just because this stretch to the west is not, doesn't mean usage won't keep growing along with the rise of Carroll County communities. New families brought to the area by BRAC and commuting to Ft Meade just are not going to take 70/29/32. We can either make this a safe, viable connector highway, or everyone (including west county residents) will continue to sit in traffic backups every rush hour. You can't just yell at the change happening around you and hope that it goes away.
Frank Hazzard
1:14 pm on Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Matthew Kircher makes a great point. The heavy volume of traffic on Route 32 is largely due to Carroll County residents passing through Howard County on their way to and from jobs at Fort Meade and elsewhere along the I-95 corridor. Those "through" commuters have favored the expansion for years. This situation is very similar to the one is Montgomery County when making Route 29 limited access was being debated. We residents of Howard County were all for it because we wanted to traverse Montgomery County quicker, but local Montgomery residents resisted because the road they were going to have to live next to wasn't really being built for them.
Sooner or later, as traffic continues to worsen, even those Howard County residents with concerns about growth will concur with widening the road. The problem is that it will take more than five years (some say 10 years) to complete the project once begun. Five-10 years of rolling back-ups twice a day is a lot of misery.
Deborah Cole
1:14 pm on Wednesday, November 21, 2012
The person who was struck and killed due to not making this a safer road was Michael du Monceau. The death of anyone should be mourned, but Michael was a special loss not only for his family and friends but for the community. He had been a professor at the University of Maryland and had been one of the original innovators at Discovery Channel. Let's make this four lanes and put "safety first."
CancerSucks
1:14 pm on Wednesday, November 21, 2012
It absolutely needs to be widened! I live and commute along this route and have to completely avoid it at rush hour.
Bryan Smith
2:31 pm on Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Concerns over growth have kept 32 from widening? Growth is happening along the 32 corridor whether it gets widened or not. Hundreds of new homes are being built on previously farmed land. Preventing 32 from widening does not appear to be having an affect on growth.
Mark
4:10 pm on Sunday, November 25, 2012
If there is a road that needs widening, it is Rt 32. Whether 32 is 2 or 4 lanes will have negligible effect on growth. The farms are selling land and developers are building homes, regardless.
Jim
4:10 pm on Sunday, November 25, 2012
Bryan hit the nail on the head. I've lived about a mile from this spot for nearly 20 years and the traffic issues on MD 32 west of 108 were present long before we moved here. Growth in western Howard and Carroll Counties? Its been happening steadily the whole time I've lived here, slowed only by the recession. Will extra lanes on 32 encourage more people to build in Carroll or western Howard Counties? Maybe a few, but it sure hasn't stopped others from doing so over the past 10-15 years. I think issues of safety trump the development concerns here.
It will be very interesting to see the changes in traffic flow that result from the construction of the new grade-separated interchange at the junction of MD 32 and Linden Church Road. That new interchange will remove the last traffic signals along this section of MD 32. Hopefully, we'll see less congestion and most importantly, fewer crashes, once the traffic signals are gone.
Kim
7:44 am on Monday, November 26, 2012
Ever since they changed the time and cycle of the lights, getting to the 108 exit off of 32 is near impossible around 5-6 pm. The back up goes all the way down 32 and what used to take only a few minutes to get to the light at 108, now takes about 20. People stopping and going, slamming suddenly on brakes, there are going to be some bad accidents all due to what they have done to the timing of those traffic lights. It's awful.