Monday, February 9, 2009

Is Snowden River Our Main St.?

The Columbia Mall is getting some competition. The locals are complaining about rush-hour traffic jams on Snowden River Parkway and county officials are laying plans to widen the road between Route 108 and Broken Land Parkway, according to this Sun story.

The road has seen a lot of development in recent years and more is to come, what with Wegman's and two hotels on the drawing board. The Sun says the county planning board is scheduled to review plans to widen the road on Thursday.

So far, $450,000 has been allocated for a third lane and sidewalks on the northbound side of the parkway up to Oakland Mills Road. Construction money is scheduled for fiscal 2011. In addition, $100,000 is scheduled to be spent in the budget year starting July 1 for planning a remake of the intersection of Broken Land and Snowden River.

At Thursday's hearing, scheduled for 7 p.m. in the county's temporary offices at 8930 Stanford Blvd., two projects will be reviewed.

One, for the coming fiscal year, would allocate $500,000 to engineer a third lane on both sides of the parkway from Oakland Mills to Route 108. The other would schedule $250,000 in the fiscal 2012 budget for planning the extra lane on the southbound side from Oakland Mills to Broken Land. Construction there would begin in fiscal 2015.

2 comments:

Jessie Newburn said...

Haha. My dear friend and I, observers of things minute, magnificent and dynamic, have been claiming for years that Snowden (and more so, Dobbin) are Columbia's de facto town center. There is so much activity in that area.

Though I have to say the AMC/Cheesecake thing at the mall is quite a scene, too!

Digital Immigrant said...

Snowden & Dobbin cannot compete with the plazas at the Mall in front of the AMC Theaters and LL Bean on a Friday or Saturday night.They're hopping even in frigid weather.Take it from one who has to deal with the traffic as she drops off and picks up her teenage son. People may not be buying retail, but they are still eating out and going to the movies, at least in HoCo.