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Many Choices As City Decides Where To Repave

P. Kenneth Burns
/
WYPR

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D) is seeking to spend $10 million to resurface at least 200 miles of roads in the city as part of her budget proposal which was sent to the city council in April. But Kathy Chopper, a city Department of Transportation spokeswoman, declined to discuss the department’s resurfacing priorities, stating officials were “not comfortable” with providing details. In an email, Chopper did say $3 million would be allocated to in-house crews for repaving projects city wide.  The remaining $7 million would go to contractors for projects within the city’s four sectors.

Without any more information on what the department is planning for 2014, some had their own suggestions as to which streets need the most help. Joyce Coates says the city should spend some money on Monroe Street, which she uses often to commute to work in South Baltimore from Park Heights. “It’s a high amount of traffic, that’s at least, that’s what I notice in the morning because that’s my route,” she said.  Coates adds the city should also focus on streets with the most potholes.

Delegate Shawn Tarrant says he has driven down Roland Avenue for many years.  He would love to see that street repaved. “It’s amazing that we can have a community that beautiful, where people pay a lot of taxes in Roland Park, and Roland Avenue is probably one of the worst streets that we have in Baltimore City. That’s just for starters.” Tarrant (D) says he wouldn’t want to name every street, but there are some streets off major thoroughfares that are in bad shape.  “We’ve got some pretty messed up roads in places in further Northwest Baltimore and also in Southwest as we look in areas down there towards Martin Luther King in that area.  So we’ve got a lot of places,” he said adding he has confidence the city will do a proper assessment.

Greater Baltimore Committee President Donald Fry says smooth road surfaces are important to the mayor’s plan of attracting 10-thousand families over the next decade.  He believes that the main roads into the city - such as Reisterstown, York and Belair roads - should be a priority. At the same time he says the department should also focus on residential streets because “those are the taxpayers of the city and they certainly deserve to have their neighborhood also in a very smooth situation for driving purposes as well.”

In her e-mail Chopper suggested “waiting until the budget receives approval before moving ahead with any details” as to which roads would get the department’s attention. The council will vote on the budget in June.