Solutions eyed for traffic-choked Severn RiverBridge
By E.B. FURGURSON III, Staff Writer
Hometownannapolis.com
Published 09/13/09
Trying to get over the Severn RiverBridge at either end of a workday can challenge even the kindest temperament.
Joshua McKerrow — The CapitalThis clot of traffic limped along Route 50 east, trying to get overthe Severn RiverBridge during the usual Friday evening backupone day this summer.
Most are familiar with the drill: Already slow traffic comes to a stop, sometimes for no apparent reason, then limps along, creating longer backups by the minute.
That, in turn, spurs drivers to pass stalled traffic on long approach lanes coming from the closest on-ramps, creating further havoc when they cut into traffic.
Soon, all of Annapolis can be gridlocked as commuters try to avoid the Route 50 backup via alternate routes.
According to state statistics, the worst end of it is usually an eastbound trip during evening rush hour or on beach getaway days during the summer. Of course, it all gets worse if an accident occurs on the bridge or its approaches - or if some sad sack's ride conks out midspan.
"You get so frustrated," said Mary Ware, who spent 20 years commuting to a job in Annapolis from Arnold and in that time learned ways to get around clotted traffic on Route 50. "I've tried everything. But no matter what you do, some days you just have to sit and take it."
Would another lane help? With the bridge overloaded, state officials are studying a variety of fixes outside of building a new, larger span.
One scenario would narrow the six existing lanes to create a seventh lane, possibly reversible between morning and evening rush hours or strictly eastbound.
This fall the State Highway Administration will make recommendations to local and state leaders based on the $1 million study.
The bridge by the numbers
Opened: 1953
Two lanes added: 1988
Length: 2,856 feet
Width: 80 feet
Clearance above Severn River: 80.5 feet Daily traffic count:
- 1980: 47,500
- 1990: 97,975
- 2008: 119,500
- 2030: 160,000 (projected)
Serious accidents:
- On bridge: 2006-2008: 8
- On approaches: 2005-2008 Eastbound: 13 / Westbound: 25
Gallons of “Blue Federal No. 29190” paint used for last re-coating in 2007: 5,100
Crossing the Severn:A history lesson
The first bridge over the Severn River wasn’t a bridge at all. Long before today’s traffic woes posed by the Severn RiverBridge, one Joseph Norwood petitioned in 1682 for permission to establish a ferry across the Severn to Annapolis.
From Colonial times into the 1800s, sailboats and other craft plied back and forth across the river as the earliest settlers got about on foot, on horseback, by wagon and by boat.
The first road bridge across the river was built in 1886 near the site of the present-day U.S. Naval Academy Bridge. Railroad bridges were built before and after. That was replaced in the 1920s by a concrete drawbridge that served as a crossing for Route 2 and later Route 50 before the larger Severn RiverBridge was completed in the 1950s.
Route 50, conceived in 1926, was originally planned to run from Nevada to Annapolis; later plans had it running from Sacramento, Calif., to Maryland’s capital city, where it ended at Church Circle.
When the decision was made to build the BayBridge, a plan was designed to carry traffic over the Severn on a new four-lane bridge.
The existing bridge was opened in 1953 after Route 50 was extended and the Bay Bridge opened, creating a flood of beach-bound traffic that had until then used bay-traversing ferries or taken the long loop across the top of the bay.
A book on the history of Maryland’s highways noted: “Traffic congestion was of epic proportions and could produce backups all the way to the Severn River (and farther), blocking entrances to Annapolis.”
That was in 1963, just 10 years after the bridge opened.
After 16 years in service, the Severn RiverBridge was refurbished in 1969.
It soon became clear Route 50’s four lanes were wholly inadequate to handle growing traffic demands, and plans were hatched in the late 1970s to widen Route 50 up to a freeway-standard six lanes.
The battle cry was “Reach the Beach,” and the highway upgrade in the late 1980s eliminated traffic lights along Route 50 at what is now Bay Dale Drive and Cape St. Claire Road, closing those and other intersections with the highway.
As the rest of Route 50 from the Washington, D.C., Beltway to the 301/50 split on the Eastern Shore was widened to six lanes, so too was the Severn River Bridge. A 20-month project to cantilever two additional lanes onto the existing bridge got under way in July 1986.
Engineers created an award-winning design to add a lane to each side of the span using 32 42-ton girders fastened with stainless steel pins weighing 2.5 tons each. That was completed in 1988, when about 55,000 vehicles used the bridge daily.
More than twice that number cross the bridge today.
In 2006 the bridge was officially renamed the Pearl HarborMemorialBridge, honoring the 65th anniversary of the Japanese attack that brought the United States into World War II.
"The bridge is in good condition. It's not in need of rehabbing or replacing," said Doug Simmons, deputy director of SHA. "We are working to see if there are potential operational improvements we can implement to move traffic through this area ... without adding the expense of a new bridge."
The Severn RiverBridge serves two masters, really. For AnneArundelCounty residents, it serves as a commuter artery. But for thousands of others every day, it's but a piece of a longer trip along the highway that stretches from OceanCity to California.
The combination pushes nearly 120,000 cars a day on average across the 56-year-old bridge. That's more than double the number that traversed the span in 1980 when the last retrofit, which added two cantilevered lanes onto the structure, was being planned.
Blame game
The fact that there are simply too many vehicles trying to cross the bridge at particular times does not fully account for its current traffic woes. The old comic strip hero Pogo's aphorism, "We have met the enemy and he is us," might cover some of the story, but not all.
Some blame highway engineering dynamics like on-ramp lane configurations and the arch of the bridge. Others think drivers slow down on the bridge to take in the scenery up and down the Severn River. Still others ascribe the bridge's woes to Murphy's Law - you know whatever can go wrong, will.
But backups approaching and on the Severn RiverBridge aren't solely problems related to that span.
The various wrecks, repairs and snafus that govern the BayBridge are responsible for some of the backups of gargantuan proportions that befall motorists traveling locally or otherwise.
Relief from those incidents won't come anytime in the near future. On-again, off-again talk of building another span across the Chesapeake Bay has not resulted in a suitable site. And in this economy, and its projected long recovery, a site wouldn't matter anyway.
Why the backups?
State highway officials and police say a couple of the popular theories explaining backups have merit.
One points to long merge lanes feeding eastbound Route 50 at both Route 2 and Rowe Boulevard that allow drivers to pass backed-up traffic, then cut over into traffic just as their lane ends.
"Right prior to the bridge, people will use that lane and pull into the other lane. Then drivers in that lane, who don't want to have a conflict, change into the middle lane and it backs everyone up," said state police Lt. Kevin Hickey, commander of the Glen Burnie barrack.
SHA engineers think the volume of traffic coming off Rowe Boulevard is a main contributor to evening eastbound traffic woes. They are considering ways to shorten or otherwise adjust those lanes to circumvent that traffic-choking movement.
Another theory says drivers slow down on the bridge to take in the sights.
"Traffic will slow 3, 4, 5 mph, and that just backs up traffic," Hickey said.
The SHA ranks that near the top of contributing factors, as well.
Cape St. Claire resident and teacher Pat Gorman, who recently got a reprieve from his 10-year daily commute across the bridge when transferred to a school up-county, thinks the weather plays into that one.
"A pretty day is worse than an overcast one," he told The Capital a couple years ago, when he still drove the bridge twice daily. "On a really pretty day there is more to look at."
He saw the situation get worse.
"In the early years I had no wait at all to merge onto Route 50," he said. "By 2007 the merge became more difficult."
He said adding signs telling drivers to maintain speed over the bridge is one part of the solution. He even thinks adding some sort of visual barrier might help.
"Like the sight barriers on exits, those slats - that might help."
Officials doubt other theories, like the one about the curve of the bridge being too high, causing drivers to slow down.
The vehicle factor
Accidents and breakdowns determine whether traffic will be just normally bad or horrendous.
Some think the bridge is cursed, a place where vehicles are drawn to break down. A few weeks ago a tractor-trailer blew a tire and left a heavy rubber skid mark across the eastbound span. It did not break down a couple miles before or after the bridge, but right on it.
Accidents pepper the bridge and its approaches, but it's not as bad as many perceive.
According to SHA, there were only eight wrecks on the actual bridge in the previous three years, 2006-2008. Five resulted in injury and no one was killed.
The approaches are a different matter.
In the previous four years, 2005-2008, there were 13 wrecks on the eastbound approach between Rowe Boulevard and the span, and 25 on the westbound approach between Route 2 and the bridge.
"Sometimes a mere breakdown will contribute to those figures," SHA spokesman Charles Gischlar said of mechanical failures that can also clog traffic.
Even a little fender bender will wreak havoc. That's why state police urge motorists involved in minor accidents to get off the bridge.
"We encourage drivers to pull off to a safe location and wait for police to arrive," Hickey said. "I know they are concerned about liability and insurance; I don't blame them. But we can put everything together."
Police even have "buddy bumpers" that can be used to push cars out of traffic without further damaging vehicles.
Report card
No matter what the reason, the bridge is failing its duty during rush hours.
State statistics assign a letter grade to indicate how well a road is doing. In the morning, the westbound side of the span earns a service level grade of E.
"To draw an analogy ... that is like a D on a report card - close to failing, but still moving," Gischlar said.
Eastbound in the evening, well, not even a tutor will help. It's an F.
"It's failing - pretty much gridlock, not moving," Gischlar added. "And it's extra bad in the summer when you have people going to the resorts."
And when there is an accident on the Severn RiverBridge, or farther along on or near the BayBridge, it only takes minutes for the entire Annapolis area to lock up like a bucket of Quikrete.
When that happens, eastbound drivers bail out of Route 50 and head for the NavalAcademyBridge, which was the site of the original Severn RiverBridge before Route 50 was improved in 1953 to cross the newly constructed BayBridge.
First they pile onto Rowe Boulevard for quick access to West Annapolis and the bridge, only to be met with gridlock along the side streets leading out of Annapolis.
As Route 50 backs up more, drivers peel off at Route 450/West Street. Soon that locks up. Then they pull off at Aris T. Allen Boulevard, if not to access the NavalAcademy bridge, then to run through Annapolis and return to Route 50 to avoid some of the backup.
And if it gets really bad, like on a beach-bound day, some will take Interstate 97 north to Benfield Boulevard to Ritchie Highway to beat some of the traffic.
"If something goes wrong on Route 50, you might as well be patient. You don't have another choice," said Arnold resident Steve Willet, who owns BWI Courier, which provides service throughout Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia.
He said the bridge affects his relatively short commute between Arnold and Parole as well as his business' local deliveries.
"It can turn a 15-minute delivery into 45 minutes," he said. "We try to work around it."
Fellow Arnold resident Ware has developed a few new techniques while working her way home from her new office in Bowie.
Since it's hard to gauge Route 50 traffic as she approaches Annapolis, she uses a scouting ploy.
"I'll get off on Route 665, and on top of the exit you can get a look to see if traffic is snarled," she said. "If it isn't, I get right back on 50."
She also uses the Internet before leaving the office, especially on Thursday and Friday during the summer.
"Thursday is the new Friday, you know. Traffic is bad," she said. If online sources like the state's CHART system indicate traffic snafus, she takes Route 450 in from Bowie.
A fix needed
It's clear that changes have to be made to better accommodate existing traffic on the bridge. The need for some sort of fix is compounded by a projection: 160,000 cars a day will use the bridge by 2030.
"Route 50 is basically a Main Street in our corridor," County Transportation Engineer George Cardwell said. "And the Severn RiverBridge is the county's chief bottleneck."
Regional traffic is trying to move on through while county traffic is basically trying to get from the Annapolis side of the river to neighborhoods on the other side, whether they be up Ritchie Highway or off Route 50 on the BroadneckPeninsula, he said.
That shows up in state traffic statistics: of the nearly 120,000 vehicles using the Severn RiverBridge daily, only about 70,000 of those cross the BayBridge.
Ideally, the long-range plan always envisioned separating the locals from regional traffic," Cardwell said. But that takes space.
"If there was a little more room we could segregate traffic with local and express lanes," he said.
Building a new Route 50 bridge across the Severn is out of the question, at least for the next 30 years or so, according to long-range plans.
Building a second bridge, perhaps upstream of the existing ones, won't happen either.
So how to fix the bottleneck bridge? State highway engineers and others are looking at a mix of fixes.
"We are taking a look at the geometry, peak travel patterns ... a variety of management issues," SHA's Simmons said of the $1 million study of options for alleviating congestion on the 1.7-mile stretch of Route 50 between Rowe Boulevard and Route 2 north.
"We are looking at more control of lane usage, varying speed limits, modifying ramps, adding lanes, reversible lanes - some or all of those," he said.
Commuters should hear this fall.
Merge lanes - September 14, 2009
Why did the geniuses as MDOT make the Rowe Boulevard merge lane extend almost to the bridge? Shorten it and PUT UP BARRIERS so people don't simply ignore the lines (like they do on Rowe Boulevard between College Creek and Taylor Avenue - one of these days someone coming out of the Archives is going to get nailed but good).
Make these SOBs wait their danged turn like EVERYONE ELSE.
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Michael Calo - Glen Burnie, MD - Karma: Neutral
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Article - September 14, 2009
Well written and quite informative article.
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Emma G. - West River, MD - Karma: Excellent
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traffic - September 14, 2009
I would take a bus instead of my car if there were one
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jennifer S. - Annapolis, MD - Karma: Neutral
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The new old severn brg - September 14, 2009
Send rt 2 traffic to the old severn river bridge. It is wide enough for 4 lanes.
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Fred Shubbie - , - Karma: Terrible
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Too Many Lanes - September 14, 2009
"Put Hwy 2 traffic Back on the Academy bridge, that's really Rt 2 anyway!"
Why would you want to funnel all the traffic coming south on RT2 into Annapolis? That would cause constant gridlock in DTA, around the Stadium and the Mall.
Try again.