Officials Criticize State Over Parking Projects

Calvert Lot Has Been in Works for Years

The Calvert County Board of Commissioners is criticizing Maryland Transportation Administration officials for what it considers the agency's slow pace in building three park-and-ride facilities in the county.

State transportation officials told the board last Thursday that a temporary park-and-ride lot at Chesapeake Church in Huntingtown would be open by the end of the year but that construction on a long-awaited lot in Prince Frederick would not begin until next spring.

"It is going to be 12 years -- 12 years -- by the time this thing is going to be done," Commissioner Linda L. Kelley (R-At Large) told state transportation officials about the Prince Frederick lot. "They built pyramids in less time than that."

The Prince Frederick lot has been planned since the late 1990s, but the state has shelved it several times.

Commissioners successfully lobbied in February to have the Prince Frederick lot, which is set to be built at the former fairgrounds site, put back on the state's list of capital projects after learning that it had been delayed again.

That lot, which will cost at least $2 million, would have 400 spaces. A request for bids on the project is set to go out in the coming weeks, said Matthew C. Fenton, a project manager and engineer with the transportation administration.

But several commissioners accused the transportation administration of unexpectedly building a gravel lot at the Chesapeake Church to relieve overcrowding at the nearby Sunderland park-and-ride lot, instead of moving more quickly on the proposed Prince Frederick lot and another one in Dunkirk.

The state considers the 150-space Huntingtown lot a minor project because it will cost a few hundred thousand dollars and be completed in about a month, said Stephen V. Silva of the transportation administration. The more expensive Prince Frederick lot would take eight months to complete.

The State Highway Administration plans to design two left-turn lanes in the median of Route 2/4 for southbound cars entering the Chesapeake Church lot and cars trying to enter a gas station from the northbound lanes. No left turns out of the gas station and church will be allowed, forcing drivers to make U-turns at the next intersection, said Steven D. Foster, a highway administration division chief.

"It is going to be a nightmare as far as I can see," said Commissioner Susan Shaw (R-Huntingtown).

Several commissioners said that a plan to have southbound commuter buses crossing over to northbound Route 2/4 had prompted the state to reject proposed lots at a bowling alley in Huntingtown and another at a church in Dunkirk. Kelley said that there was no difference between those two proposals and the one for the church.