A New Neighbor

JessieX alerted us to a new blogger in the neighborhood. "53 Beers on tap," a reference to the number of taps at the old Last Chance Saloon in Oakland Mills, promises commentary on civic, political, social, and cultural matters affecting Columbia and Howard County, Maryland.

For starters, he takes up General Growth's suggestion for a new "connection" between Oakland Mills and Town center and discussion of same at a recent meeting in Oakland Mills.

A couple of people in the audience latched onto the words that the connection "could" be a road and immediately assumed that it "will" be a road, and crafted their comments to start to create a public outcry against a "through road across 29 through Oakland Mills".

I'll comment no further on that behavior, because I have found over the years that I am a poor defender of idiocy. The question to answer is, can a road be built between Town Center and Oakland Mills in a non-disruptive way to Oakland Mills? To answer the question, one only need look less than a mile south.

Seneca Drive crosses over US29 and into the Allview community. Allview is a mature residential community of single family homes. Seneca terminates into a traffic circle which spurs off into several residential road, each of which contains speed humps. Having frequented that community myself, that community is a network of 25-mph speed limit roads and it appears safe. And although through the network of side roads, one can get to, for example, Broken Land Parkway or Kings Contrivance, it is not easy, nor is it a time saver to do so.