Our comment on a third Bay Bridge: Nuts.

Maryland transportation planners have given the public until May 10 to offer opinions on plans to build a new Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

We don’t need that long. Here’s ours: Nuts.

That’s what the Maryland Transportation Authority must be if there is anyone who honestly believes this will ever happen.

And that’s what the defiant response should be from area residents whose lives would be paved over by this highway builders’ fever dream.

Last week, the authority released its report on the four options for the proposed third Chesapeake Bay Bridge crossing span that the public can now comment on through May 10.

The draft Environmental Impact Statement outlines the three possible crossings — one through Pasadena, one through Edgewater, and one through Annapolis next to the existing bridge — as well as a no-build option.

We’ve said this before: there was never any doubt, really, that transportation planners would focus on building a third Bay Bridge between Sandy Point and Kent Island. It’s the obvious choice for a new crossing, really.

The highway system has grown over six decades to support the first span in 1952 and then the parallel span in 1973. It’s simply easier to expand a highway than build a new one.

The Maryland Transportation Authority went through the motions of looking at projections and models. It released funny-looking maps with squiggly lines that represented other options in Anne Arundel County, Pasadena to Rock Hall and Mayo Peninsula to Easton.

Both are ridiculous creatures that Gov. Larry Hogan killed in 2019 with his gubernatorial fiat that he would only support an additional crossing at the current location. Transportation planners are really just going through the motions on those ideas.

Here’s the truth about this whole charade. It’s being conducted to support Hogan’s fantasy.

We’ve said this before: There simply is no realistic possibility that a third Chesapeake Bay bridge will be built in Maryland. None.

The $10 billion-plus price-tag alone would be a fatal flaw for this idea except for one person, Hogan. The Republican from Annapolis has a pragmatic view of transportation rooted squarely in the build-it approach that made him a successful real estate developer.

Cars are likely to be the dominant mode of personal transport for the next 100 years. Autonomous vehicles won’t reduce the number of cars on the road; they will increase it.

The governor sees no technology available that can move the number of people crossing the bay every year and get them to their destinations with their cars. Ferries won’t work. A rail line is too expensive and won’t close the last-mile gap. Smart buses just won’t gain traction with the people making this trip twice daily for work, or anyone else.

So, Hogan was just being Hogan when he stood this project up and ordered progress. He has walked away from the discussion of alternatives to more cars. Expand the Baltimore Washington Parkway, the American Legion Bridge and Interstate 270. Tweak tolls so that they encourage driving. Add buses. The Purple line in Montgomery County got started, but the state cut its contributions in half.

Hogan will be out of office in 19 months. He might run for president or U.S. Senate. Either way, meaningful state support for a new Bay Bridge will end with his term — an eyeblink in terms of capital budgets, federal approvals and money from Washington needed to make this happen.

Then people who want other solutions will be back in charge of transportation planning. Maybe a train will work. Maybe ferries can be part of an integrated solution. Maybe there are other ideas.

In the meantime, we all know what this notion is.

Nuts.