October 29th 2023 UPDATE
The Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) sent email notice regarding a meeting to be held Monday October 30th to discuss their draft Consolidated Transportation Plan (CTP); see notice below. It would be helpful to have as many members of our community attend as possible in order to make it clear that the US29/Rivers Edge Road intersection remains a critically important issue to our community. If you cannot attend in person but will attend via the livestream, please register your presence so officials are aware.
| On Monday, October 30th, the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) will hold its annual Howard County Consolidated Transportation Program (CTP) Tour Meeting to share its draft CTP. The meeting will begin at 6:00 p.m. and take place in the County’s George Howard Building at 3430 Court House Drive in Ellicott City, in addition to being livestreamed. The CTP is the six-year capital budget for State transportation projects and programs. During the tour meeting, MDOT will discuss projects and funding across the full range of activities in the county and the state by the Maryland Aviation Administration, Motor Vehicle Administration, Maryland Transit Administration, Maryland State Highway Administration and the Maryland Transportation Authority. The CTP is updated every year based on local priorities expressed in the annual priority letter, local and regional planning efforts, and funding forecasts. To review the Draft FY 2024-FY 2029 Consolidated Transportation Program and learn more, click here. To review Howard County’s Transportation Priorities Letter, click here. |
This rest of this page provides an overview of the controversy surrounding the intersection of Rivers Edge Road and Route 29. Click on the links below to jump directly to any section:
History
The original subdivision of Holiday Hills at this intersection was built in the late 1950s by developers Frank and Millie Robbins who purchased the land, originally a cow farm. Millie is 93 and an active member of this community! Like Millie, several of the original homeowners are very active and rely heavily on safe and reasonable access in and out of our neighborhood. In the 1950s, Route 29 was a quiet 2-lane road which has now grown into a busy 5 (soon to be 6) lane highway. Over the decades, three more sub-divisions were added to our community, expanding it to 413 homes.
By the mid 1980s, the Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA) started exploring ways to remove the traffic signal at this intersection in order to improve traffic flow on Route 29. Residents protested because without the signal, our safe access to emergency services and to all destinations would be severely degraded.
SHA engineers explored numerous alternatives including adding connections to Johns Hopkins Road and Route 32 as well as construction of overpass and underpass interchanges. Most were discounted due to environmental impact or engineering issues (grade, drainage, etc.). Their final recommendation was to build an overpass (technically called a “grade-separated interchange”) over Route 29. However, for budget reasons, this was not pursued and the signal remained.
In 2010, SHA again proposed removing the signal and again residents protested. After vehement protests and support from our elected officials, SHA relented and again studied options to provide our community with safe, reasonable access. SHA hired an outside engineering firm to study the interchange and concluded that an overpass was the best alternative and developed detailed engineering concept drawings of the overpass. However SHA failed to consult with the communities on Old Columbia Road and construction was deferred.
Current Controversy
In 2019, following a series of accidents at the intersection that included a tragic fatality in October, SHA again proposed the cheapest alternative of removing the traffic signal rather than constructing the needed interchange. Notice of an SHA meeting was not provided until December 2019.
The residents of our community appreciate the importance of reducing congestion and are deeply concerned about safety on Route 29; we are all Howard County citizens and Route 29 commuters. Extensive work by SHA has made the safe, effective solution clear and our community has waited patiently for more than 30 years for SHA and Howard County to prioritize construction of the needed overpass.
The community objects to SHA’s proposal to simply remove the traffic signal without building the proper infrastructure for numerous reasons including:
- Degraded access to emergency services for our 1000+ residents
- Degraded access to all points north, east, and west including hospitals, urgent care, and all of the schools our nearly 300 children attend.
- Danger of forcing our residents, especially new and elderly drivers, to merge into the fast, heavy 29S traffic with an overly short (500′) on-ramp and without the benefit of a signal to create breaks in traffic. This will likely result in many accidents and simply shift accident locations from the intersection to the merge.
- Danger of having to ride the already hazardous cloverleaves and weave lanes at Routes 32 and 29 multiple times daily without exiting where normally expected. This too will result in more accidents.
- Danger of removing one of the only two routes into and out of our community. If Route 29 Southbound is blocked for any reason, we will have no egress options.
There are many other reasons including damage to the environment, immense cost to our community, and the inequity of having had interchanges for smaller communities and numerous lower-impact infrastructure projects prioritized above our needed interchange.
Improving Safety
There are numerous obvious safety improvements that SHA could make to the intersection at Route 29 and Rivers Edge Road that do not include removal of the existing traffic signal. We will discuss those detailed options at the February 13th meeting
Needed Infrastructure
What’s been clear for more than 30 years is that the proper solution to improving traffic flow and safety is to build an overpass at Rivers Edge Road and to then remove the traffic signal. SHA consultants developed a detailed analysis of the overpass shown here.
The overpass will allow residents to cross over Route 29, to Old Columbia Road, turn south and then access 29 northbound using a new on-ramp (which will additionally benefit the communities on the east side of Route 29. The on-ramp being further south than the current left-lane access to 29N will make merging much safer and prevent the need for crossing multiple lanes of traffic quickly to access Route 32.
Moreover, the overpass will take traffic off 29 entirely by allowing residents to access local roads, Kings Contrivance shopping center, provide safe foot and bicycle access, and provide a safe way to access Routes 29 and 32 in any direction.
SHA has not provided RFQ responses for the cost of the overpass, however similar construction projects such as the recent overpass constructed at Linden Church Road when Route 32 was widened 8 years ago cost roughly $15 million. SHA and Howard County have found budget to build numerous other overpasses, often serving much smaller communities. They have found millions of dollars to expand bicycle paths, build expansive new sports parks (including overpasses and other associated infrastructure), beautify bridges, etc. It is unreasonable to place the huge safety and financial burden on our community rather than sharing the cost and benefits of building the proper infrastructure as SHA has done for many other communities.
PAST UPDATES
Feb 20th 2020 UPDATE
The Rivers Edge Working Group and a number of community residents attended the HoCo DOT Transportation Planning meeting today and it went well, as expected. Bruce Gartner, the DOT Administrator was out sick, but David Cookson spoke in his place. Representatives from numerous elected officials’ offices were present. Mr. Cookson gave a brief overview of the priority letter purpose and process. Stephanie Cates-Harman spoke and related what she and Bruce had discussed: that the interchange would be HoCo’s top construction priority and that we would be able to participate in the wording of the priority to indicate that what is being requested is a grade-separated interchange, not just “improvements”.
Several HoCo DOT staff were there to speak with folks individually; they made it clear that we have the full attention of and support from County officials – a few pointed out that 1000 single-issue voters will swing a county election. However they also pointed out that what we really need is the support of (and funding from) the State where 1000 voters doesn’t carry nearly as much sway.
Our next steps with respect to the interchange (other than refining the language in the priority letter) will be to work on lobbying our State elected officials and developing a strategy around press coverage and such.
Note: A few residents came to express concerns about the recent changes in timing of the signal at our intersection. Mr. Cookson made it clear that the county does not control the signal, it is owned and managed by the State Highway Administration.
What Each Resident Can Do
Residents and friends can help by writing letters as detailed below:
Before the Feb 20th meeting where the Howard County Dept of Transportation will decide on county infrastructure priorities, please email/write to the HoCo officials asking them to make funding the interchange at Rivers Edge Road a top priority:
- Planning Manager for Howard County Transportation: David Cookson (dcookson@howardcountymd.gov)
- Administrator Howard County Office of Transportation: Bruce Gartner
(send c/o David Cookson) - Howard County Executive Calvin Ball ( calvinball@howardcountymd.gov )
Let them know that:
- Our community has been waiting for more than 30 years for Howard County to prioritize an interchange to improve the safety and accessibility of Route 29 and the communities at Rivers Edge Road.
- You appreciate their decision to prioritize a Rivers Edge Road grade-separated interchange in their priority letter to the State.. (for more information about the priority letter see: here)
A sample letter is here.
If you choose to attend in person, the HoCo transportation priority planning meeting will be held on Thursday, February 20th from 5-8pm in the Columbia/Ellicott City room of the George Howard building at 3430 Court House Drive in Ellicott City. Since HoCo’s Transportation Administrator Bruce Gartner has committed to making the interchange a top priority this year, in-person attendance at the meeting is no longer recommended. Instead, please write to Mr. Gartner as described above.
Feb 18th UPDATE
The Rivers Edge Working Group is happy to announce that Howard County’s Department of Transportation has committed to making a grade-separated interchange for Rivers Edge Road the top transportation construction priority in its annual planning letter to Maryland’s State Highway Administration (SHA).
Because Mr. Gartner has heard our community’s concerns and promised to make our interchange the county’s top transportation priority, he has requested that the community NOT turn out in force to Thursday’s meeting since that will make the meeting unproductive. The Rivers Edge Working Group agrees and has sent email to all community residents asking that in lieu of attending Thursday’s in person, we send email to Mr. Gartner and County Executive Ball thanking them for their support and conveying the importance of this interchange to our community. If you have time, please also complete the Howard County Transportation survey and write in your request for the interchange at the end. Writing emails or taking the survey will be equivalent to attending the meeting and providing a comment card. A sample letter is here.
The working group will attend the Thursday meeting in person and work with Mr. Gartner to discuss next steps including how to lobby the State to allocate funds for construction of an interchange, sound barriers, etc. If you have specific concerns beyond those, please share them with Stephanie Cates-Harman so she can raise them on your behalf. If you prefer to attend in person, the meeting is open to the public; but the working group respectfully asks that we do our best to consolidate our voices so we can use our time with the transportation officials well.
For more details see the updated What can I do NOW?.
Feb 5th UPDATE
The Rivers Edge Working Group is happy to announce that SHA has canceled the February 13th informational meeting and postponed the construction scheduled for April to eliminate the light and close our access to Rt 29 North; you can see the notice from SHA here.
While we are very pleased with this result, we must continue to work together to obtain funding for the grade-separated interchange our neighborhood needs. It is critical that everyone attend the Howard County Transportation Priority planning meeting scheduled for February 20th from 5 pm to 8 pm at 3430 Court House Drive, Ellicott City . For more details about what else you can do to help, please see the updated What can I do NOW?
Recent Events
While preparing for the February 13th meeting, working group members Stephanie Cates-Harman, David Albert, and John Lawrence were invited to meet with Terry Soos, SHA District Engineer for District 7 and her staff on February 4th. The meeting lasted two hours and covered issues related to the interchange and SHA’s proposed action. We raised the numerous safety concerns associated with the merge onto Rt 29, with traffic that was no longer tempered by the light. We spoke about our residents entering the cloverleaf at Rt 32 several times in any given day, and the increased risk of collision there. We addressed the loss of access and enormous financial cost to this community. We closed the meeting with a request for SHA to take a step back, cancel the February 13th meeting, cancel the current plans in April to take out the light, and work with us to study and implement less disruptive safety improvements. In the meantime, we asked that SHA help us as we lobby for funding of the grade-separated interchange that was expected to begin construction in 2018.
Ms. Cates-Harman received a call February 5th from Ms. Soos, who after consulting with Greg Slater, the MDOT Secretary, has decided to proceed as we requested: cancel the meeting on 2/13, cancel the planned construction for April, and begin working with the community to solve the problem that exists at the intersection.
We believe the halt to the project is the direct result of your efforts in reaching out to our politicians, and our politicians speaking on our behalf. Many thanks to Senator Guzzone, and State Delegates Shane Pendergrass, Vanessa Atterbeary and Jen Terrasa. Our thanks also to Howard County Executive Ball and Councilwoman Deb Jung for their proactive engagement with SHA. We also thank Governor Hogan and Lt Gov. Rutherford and Secretary Slater for their immediate attention to our concerns over the safety of this community.
Our work is not over. We need to make sure that Howard County sets the needed interchange as an infrastructure priority. A priority planning meeting is scheduled for February 20th from 5 pm to 8 pm at 3430 Court House Drive, Ellicott City. Everyone’s schedules are crazy but we need to make time to show up and make our voices heard! For more details see the updated What can I do NOW?.