Annapolis Capital Punishment

Today’s Capital (February 1, 2007) tells of a local group thinking about solving Bay Bridge traffic woes and it comes up with--a ferry system? I think we’ve all read this story before, and again and again and all they can come up with is a return to the very type of service that used to move us until the first bridge was built? This type of “thinking” if you can call it that, continues to operate on the same old assumptions that we must drive cars, we will always drive cars, and there will always be cheap private automobile transport available.
The first bridge came in 1952, followed by the second one about twenty years later, and ever since, they have been followed by talk and more talk about bridges here, bridges there and now ferry systems.
It’s a big challenge, but one must ask, who will make up the masses of people that will make such a trip? Where will a ferry big enough to carry hundreds dock in downtown Annapolis? Where will all the cars be parked (on both sides) for the people to get on the boat? By the time one parks a car on Kent Island, boards a ferry, rides on the ferry and then disembarks, I predict about 45 minutes will have elapsed.
We cannot compare ourselves to either Seattle or New York, although maybe Rhode Island has some similarities. A lot of conditions as well as infrastructure need to be in place for a ferry system to work, but most of all, there must be a market that meets a critical mass requirement that will actually ride such a ferry system because A) It saves a lot of time B) It is comparable in cost to driving C) It is a lot easier than, or otherwise preferable to driving or D) Some other compelling reason or set of reasons such as lots of high paying jobs in a dense area and lots of nice bedroom communities in outlying areas.
Does either Baltimore or Annapolis offer that? Will they ever?
Remember the Concorde SST? If it were profitable, the French and British would still be doing it.
Why are we proposing complex, large scale “solutions” when the state capital does not even have commuter buses to Baltimore and when our own local transit system is beleaguered by mismanagement, labor shortages, poor morale and tenuous federal funding issues that are not even addressed? And why are we not seriously talking about major development of express commuter buses for crossing the existing bridges? At the present, Annapolis Transit sends one commuter bus back and forth to Kent Island each weekday morning and afternoon. It goes over empty in the am and comes back full and then goes back full in the pm and comes back empty, and is considered to be a very successful run. So, why are we not expanding that? Why are we not expanding other commuting options by transit? Why are we not discussing reinstating the commuter express bus chopped under the Ehrlich Administration?
Again, we operate under certain assumptions that we will also be commuting in droves in the year 2010 and 2015, but will we? Only if we choose to keep doing that.