Bay Bridge traffic

Citizens! Gather round and tell me: haven’t you had enough? Locals who were out and about Friday, grocery or other shopping, going to local restaurants or one’s place of work, quickly found themselves stuck in the Mother of all Traffic Jams.

There was no place to escape with all the side streets packed. One did have time to think! The word, enough!, made me think of all the planning, cost assessments, passing the buck, excuses lasting generations, all because of the pathetic lifelong project we know as the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

I am definitely not a civil engineer, those folks who design, build, and maintain bridges. I’m just one who is happy to pay high taxes for the pleasure of living here, but I am having trouble with my choice.

Our family moved to Annapolis in 1967 and lived here for 10 years including the opening of the bridge’s second span in June 1973. From the day it was opened, we learned it was not enough to keep up with the increase in traffic, ironically a byproduct of the new span.

Press forward to the 21st century. We returned to Annapolis in 2008, naively thinking the bridge problem must have been solved. In spite of all the ideas, cockamamie and sensible, the conversations had a familiar ring.

Politicians work for us. Collectively, they seem to lack any semblance of imagination. I cannot believe that adding another bridge or more roads through Kent Island is the only possible route for a completely new crossing.

There is a lot of chatter about democracy these days. I still believe in it and our Constitution but democracy demands participation of the demos, aka, the people— ordinary citizens who will finally demand a solution to this vexing, generational problem and in one voice proclaim: Enough!

Gabrielle Strandquist, Annapolis