OnFootBlog.com

I’m going to stop posting on here for a long while. Possibly forever.

When I first started this site, my employer was the Annapolis Capital, a wonderful paper that (at the time) had no running or transportation blogs. Now, however, I work for the Baltimore Sun, which within the last year has launched both a wonderful transportation blog and, more recently, a very nice running section. Since these vastly outdo my blog in terms of quality and quantity, I’m happy to say that it’s now quite redundant.

That said, I’d still love to see you at a Friday meetup, as those will continue.

While searching for a rather repetitively aired commercial on which I’d long meant to comment*, I found something much more interesting instead:

Giving it a shot: So … What are we waiting for?

*I was originally looking for the piece that starts with the dialogue (or monologue, I guess): “Bicycle, what are we waiting for …” but I could not find it in video form, even though it’s an incredibly frequent CNN commercial. In either case, I find it very tough to imagine the focus group that resulted in Zyrtec brand managers deciding to run ads in which women talk to nonverbal objects/entities (here’s another example). Perhaps the waiting area outside of the conference area was filled with hallucinogens on that fateful day.

Or ‘A good excuse to post a brief history of something that won’t exist for awhile’

I couldn’t help noticing over the weekend that there was a significant lack of happiness and joy in local media regarding the proposed casino at Arundel Mills. Witness:

Lovable, cantankerous writer #1 – Parsing things in terms of potential traffic jams.

Lovable, cantankerous writer #2 – Parsing things in terms of the Mafia. Or something.

Possibly lovable but anonymous editorial ‘we’ - Parsing things in terms of budget numbers.

So what can I add to all of this? I would hardly say that there’s much new material for me to suggest in terms of the casino debate itself (much more of which is out there if you care to look). No, it would be much better if I could put this in the context of some much larger regional development pattern.

I was just thinking along those lines (“What should I do today? Gee, I would love to write about a regional development pattern in the Howard / Anne Arundel area”) when a tasty can of expansion on Snowden River Parkway arrived like (canned) Manna from Heaven. Between that, the casino and a planned third lane on the BW parkway, there’s plenty of expansion to talk about in the region.

All of this is a great excuse to talk about what isn’t getting built yet — specifically, MTA’s planned Yellow Line.

The Yellow Line, a 28-mile route proposed construction between Towson and Columbia, was part of a larger plan originally set out in 2002 by the administration of then-governor Parris N. Glendening. This plan included the currently promising Red Line as well as literally dozens of miles of other construction. As with the Red Line, the Yellow Line did not have a specific type of train listed in its definition, with the Glendening team chosing to leave the specifics of train (or even rapid bus) technology to later studies.

The idea of serving this market with rail goes much farther back than the Glendening administration. MARC and Amtrak go through both counties, and commercial railroads have served the area for most of the industrial era. One of them even appears to have used the yellow look before. Since Columbia is a rather new community, however, the dense intraurban networks that served other parts of the area in the early 1900s never really seem to have taken root in Howard county, railroad museums aside.

Back to the modern era: When Glendening was ousted by Robert Erlich Jr., rail construction was at least temporariliy ousted by roads. The IHC became the more fashionable building project to talk about, and trains took a back seat for awhile. This focus away from expansion was probably a good thing, as it allowed some basic, much-needed fixes to be made on the original light rail line.

Meanwhile, yellow line fans patiently left it alone (or maybe played with it a bit on their fantasy maps) and didn’t think much about it, putting emphasis on plans that were more realistic in the short term — namely, pushing for the Red, Purple and Silver lines in Maryland and Washington (and Virginia), respectively.

Eventually, Erlich was in turn pushed out of office, supplanted by Martin O’Malley. While O’Malley’s role has yet to play out, the combination of a democratic governor and a stimulus-hungry president may well push certain projects forward.

The yellow line, however? Don’t bet on it being built anytime soon.

Just to put this project in its proper place on the timeline, the downtown loop that would make the Yellow Line functional is on the second tier of priorities, behind not just the initial Red Line construction but also any possible extension of Baltimore’s Green (Subway) Line to Morgan State University. As Spence at the BaltimoreFuture blog states, this would put the second part of the yellow line — the part that goes beyond Dorsey Station to eventually hit Columbia Town Center — very, very far beyond the calendar range of reliable forecasts.

And that’s my very short history of the Yellow Line, as it were.

Next week’s fantasy animal: The elusive North American tusked mountain shark.

Polka and beer might seem like an odd backdrop for legions of health-conscious runners, but the worlds appeared to get along just fine when I jogged around Patterson Park this morning.

Granted, Baltimore’s 35th annual Polish Festival is more of a night affair. Even so, the closed-off street that resulted from the party suited a lot of pedestrians just fine. I counted 22 runners, hikers and dog walkers during my very brief time on the edges of the park. There were also bikers on the streets around the park, but they looked like they were actually going somewhere, so I didn’t count them in my leisure audit, so to speak.

Here’s my route map.

It’s not just your imagination: Arundel Mills really is huge.

At 1.3 million feet, according to the owners’ site, it’s the second largest mall in Maryland. It was the biggest, until the mall in Annapolis, where I bought my copy of The Sparrow, opened an expansion in 2007. Development is following, with the BWI hotel district likely to eventually merge into Arundel Mills’ cocoon of big-box and small-box retailers.

That all adds up to a lot of teenagers and bored parents, which means an opportunity to jog around the perimeter of the parking lot shirtless, embarrassing your child, spouse or younger sibling beyond virtually anything else you could possibly do.

However, I am sad to say that I do not recommend this course of action. The parking lot perimeter lacks sidewalks and has guardrails in some place that are likely to bust a kneecap if you trip or swerve.

Instead, try running a few intervals around the pond near the AACC branch. It’s beatiful in most spots, and you’ll get a nice hill workout (see map — I’ve modified my route slightly to make each loop a bit closer to a mile). You could also enjoy walking this, if that’s more your style. It could be especially good for people with dogs.

Then, when you’re through with your running and stretching, there’s no shortage of places to eat. Assuming, that is, that your loved ones don’t chase their sweaty, heavily breathing, embarrassing family member away.

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Note: This could also be in very easy transit reach if they ever get around to building the MTA Yellow Line. Which is to say: Don’t hold your breath.