Southern Maryland now has a list of what it needs

Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2008

There is nothing startling in that list. Nothing Southern Marylanders haven’t heard and said a dozen times before.

But these are the recommendations of the Commission to Study Southern Maryland Transportation Needs. And believe it or not, it was controversial. Not the recommendations that came out of the 21-member group after five meetings this year and last year. What was controversial was the appointment of the commission itself.

In 2005, former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) vetoed the bill setting up the commission, for reasons that officially had to do with the costs but that actually had to do with a political struggle between Democrats and Republicans. The Maryland legislature overrode that veto the following year. That particular fight, like so much of the constant stream of partisan political bickering, seems utterly insignificant with the distance of a year or two.

In any case, what we’re left with is a report that states the obvious: Traffic around Waldorf is a mess. The bridge to Solomons can’t handle the workday commuter travel between Calvert and St. Mary’s County — a minor traffic accident can cause long delays. We need more ways to get out of our cars and onto mass transit to save fuel costs and to keep roads unclogged.

So what was the point of this exercise? To get this all written down. That might sound ridiculous, but this is the way government works. The region’s transportation needs for the next 20 years have been written down, and priorities have been set. Southern Maryland politicians can use the study to make their case for transportation funding from federal and state officials.

But turning words on paper into reality won’t come easily. The economy is sour, the state government is tapped out, the federal government is beyond broke, and there are thousands of bridges and highways in the nation that need to be repaired. This isn’t a time when the country seems inclined to make major investments in infrastructure.

However, priorities can change quickly. Earlier this year, Republicans and Democrats in Congress passed an economic stimulus package that sent $600 checks out to each taxpayer. That money is pretty much gone now — much of it went into the gas tank — and there’s not a lot to show for it.

The next time, some thinking goes, the money should go into mammoth public works projects — roads and bridges — to repair the nation’s sagging infrastructure. Whether or not this is good economic policy can be debated. But what will really matter is whether this idea gains political currency. If that actually happens there would be a mad scramble to find projects to spend the money on.

If that sounds far-fetched, it isn’t. Take a look at the history of homeland security funding, much of which went to buy things local governments and law enforcement agencies didn’t even know they needed.

If the federal government decides it wants to invest in public works to stimulate the economy, Southern Maryland has got a list of projects ready to roll out. The report that wrote down what everybody who lives here already knows could actually become important.