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.

Along with the usual onfootblog Baltimore Friday running groups, there’s something special happening tomorrow in the city.

Check out this site for more information on biking to work in Baltimore for bike-to-work day 2009.

For people who live in the Hampden, Station North, Roland Park or Druid Hill areas and work somewhere near downtown, it’s pretty easy.  The Jones Falls Trail and an abundance of bike lanes (plus some shared, hashed bike routes) get rid of a lot of the hassle. Other areas of the city can be spotty, though I know that the Pigtown/Carroll Park/Gwynns Falls Trail corridor is also developing nicely for bikes.

As usual, dress safely and don’t over-exert. Good luck!

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One more note: This is the first yearly iteration of bike-to-work day for which all MTA buses will have bike racks.

A quick housekeeping note: I’m slightly tweaking the layout of this week’s options. There’s no shortage of stuff to do this week: I just realized that in certain future weeks, I might not be so lucky, so I should probably shorten things up a bit and leave people to their own devices at bit more.

That said, here are some choices for this week:

What I’ll be doing: Probably just training this week. Perhaps by myself, or maybe with the Panera running group if I’m able to make it down to Glen Burnie.

Other options: It’s getting late enough in the year that you could theoretically run a marathon and not be categorized under “completely insane.” If you run the Seneca Creek race, however, be warned: It’s point-to-point, so you’ll want to park near the finish line and take a bus. More events on this weekend’s calendar include a few 5Ks, a 3-miler (just shy of 5K) and a 12K.

In the future: Next week, a 5K track run in far yonder western Maryland. Other stuff as well.

As always, you can see a full list of upcoming transit events, races, training rides, walks, and runs via the on-foot calendar of events.

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.

I’ve been doing a lot of interval workouts lately, but mapping individual track runs is pointless. Imagine: “I went around. And then I went around again! And then I went around a third time!! Guess what happened next!!!”

That said, there’s at least some relevant information I can provide after track runs: The collected locations and conditions of the tracks themselves. See below:
View Larger Map

It’s just an iframe, so it’s not as web-special as my Baltimore food retailers map at baltimoregroceries.org — but it will have to do for now.

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.

Yesterday, I had a chance to run around the Fort Armistead Park / Thoms Cove area. It was quite pleasant, with very little traffic on the roads. See the route here.

I don’t recommend this route for people with Animals: Simply too many chances to lose them. Bikers might get bored, but runners and walkers should have a great time.

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Note: I’m including this in both the “Anne Arundel” and “Baltimore City” categories, since it borders each area.

One of the main goals of this blog is to build community.

Specifically, I want a community of happy, well-adjusted people who like to discuss walking, biking, running and related topics. Maybe sometimes they’ll even walk and run together. Maybe they’ll even spontaneously break into song once in awhile. You never know.

Starting on the very modest level of my blog, I would like to invite you into that community. If you would like to write about walking and/or running in the Baltimore area, please e-mail my gmail account, which is named “patrickmaynard” (minus the qoutes, of course). I’m not posting it with the little twirly “at” symbol because evil robots will pick it up and send me spam, but I’m sure you can figure it out.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Here is a brief summary of my recent runs. Nothing special here: I’ll probably start using some of the Web’s more innovative tools shortly, with maps and more in-depth descriptions of how to get to a place, where to put water, whether you need a friend to drive along in your car shouting, etc.,.

Until then, this is all I have.