Now is the time for bay ferry system

I was glad to see the recent issuance of an RFP (request for proposal) to study a High Speed Ferry System for the Chesapeake Bay. The maritime side of Maryland situated around the bay has flagged economically in the last 40 years as the D.C. suburbs have grown and Washington itself has become a global city.

Perhaps now is the time to reactivate the water as a transportation resource and to begin to stop building roads feeding sprawling auto dependent development patterns into the sensitive bay watershed. Water quality and non-point source pollution are inextricably intertwined and hard wired to suburban growth forms.

We should begin to once again build cities and towns in ways that are dense, walkable and utilize land in an efficient way. That also conserves our green watershed and preserves healthy ecosystems.

A concern would be that MDOT just smiles and does not take seriously such a marine transit proposal and gets on with the serious work of building a third bay bridge.

Another bridge will only bring more of the same auto-dependent sprawl in the form of strip shopping centers, spec and flex office buildings, pad sites, tract housing developments and apartments all surrounded by surface parking lots.

Maryland could look to Washington state to see what a thriving marine transit system looks like for the Puget Sound and points north as a model. We will of course have to develop town design standards for Marine Transit Oriented Development (MTOD) as such a system matures over time.

— Craig Purcell, Baltimore