by FERN SHEN and GERALD NEILY (photos by GERALD NEILY)
((UPDATE: Click through to see what the city has to say now.)) Sarah Reyes had to swerve the first time she saw the orange cones that started to appear a couple of weeks ago on Baltimore’s Franklin Street, around the Greene Street intersection.
They were weirdly placed, she thought, and dangerous: in the middle of the four-lane roadway, blocking off the left-center lane. The cones seemed to mean that this lane was now only for cars turning off Franklin into the parking garage for the Social Security Administration’s massive Metro West building. The cone blockage is still a problem, Reyes complains, because confused motorists have to jam on their brakes to get around it, especially when there’s a long line of cars awaiting security clearance to enter the garage.
“It’s been wreaking havoc, there’s a back-up, it’s an accident waiting to happen,” said Reyes, 32 of Halethorpe. “To me it was insane, just not logical. Why were they doing this?”
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According to SSA spokeswoman Dorothy Clark, it was the city’s doing. The Department of Transportation set things up that way because they are repairing a water main break and need to block off the building’s Saratoga Street garage entrance.
“We had been given a tentative date to complete the work of Sept. 16 and now it’s been moved to Sept. 25, we’re told,” Clark said.
The security measures (including checking inside vehicles’ trunks) are standard for this building, as they are for the agency’s main campus in Woodlawn, Clark said.
City officials confirm Clark’s basic explanation, but say the cone set-up was Social Security’s idea.
“We have been working with that garage and it was their idea to do it that way,” said Adrienne Barnes, director of communications for the Baltimore Department of Transportation.
Could the whole thing be done better? (It is a busy intersection, with people heading over to Route 40, turning left on Greene Street and making a lot of other decisions quickly.)
Could the signage be clearer? (Electronic signs ambiguously refer to the “center lane” of four lanes being for “SSH only.” And yet, there are two center lanes. This also contradicts the overhead lane sign which hasn’t been changed.)
What does SSH stand for, anyway? (Clark and Barnes didn’t know.)
“We’ll try and get somebody out there to take a look at it and get back to you,” Barnes said.
UPDATE: Adrienne Barnes called back to say they are looking into concerns about this location and discussing ways to modify it until the water main repairs are complete. “We want to make sure we do everything we can to ensure safety and convenience for motorists,” she said. One possible fix: taking the cones off in the afternoon, when westbound commuter traffic flow is heaviest. Barnes said they are hoping whatever changes they decide on are made tomorrow.
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