At about 6:30 a.m. each school day, Ruth MacGregor drives a big yellow school bus down Route 40 from Catonsville and across the Patapsco River Bridge into Howard County.

“And I’m not the only one,” the Catonsville resident said.

In fact, about 60 of Howard County Public Schools’ 425 school buses are kept overnight at a depot in Catonsville and driven across the bridge each morning, schools transportation Director David Drown said.

Usually, the cross-county commute is no problem, MacGregor said. But the State Highway Administration is planning a complicated renovation project on the 1936 bridge starting in the fall of next year and lasting until the spring of 2013,  and MacGregor wonders if that will change her commute.

“I’d really like to know how this is going to impact me,” she said.

To find answers, MacGregor joined about 50 other residents from both sides of the river at Catonsville Middle School Tuesday, where SHA officials fielde questions about the project.

The meeting was part of an effort to “advertise” the $15 to $20 million project, so residents won’t be surprised when construction starts next year.

According to SHA project manager Danelle Bernard, the project calls for two temporary bridges to be constructed, one on each side of the existing structure, so that traffic — about 40,000 vehicles cross the bridge each day — won’t be unduly affected.

The temporary bridges will each carry two lanes of traffic while the four-lane permanent structure is renovated, she said.

Still, there will be six months at the beginning of the project and six months at the end of the project when westbound traffic will be limited to one lane, she said.

According to Drown, who was briefed on the project by SHA officials, it is still unclear how much the project will affect MacGregor and the school system’s other bus drivers.

“We’ve been told that (the SHA) is going to maintain traffic,” he said. “However, there will be delays.”

The delays won’t affect bus schedules for students, Drown said, but could force bus drivers to start their morning commutes earlier or to get back to the depot in Catonsville a bit later in the afternoons.

“We’ll use the bridge as long as we can, but if we cannot use the bridge we’ll have alternate routes by which to get in and out of the county,” he said. Those alternate routes, he said, include Frederick Road and Interstate 70.

MacGregor, who works a second job at the Giant Food in Dorsey Search in the afternoons, said she is worried about her afternoon drive back across the bridge into Howard County after dropping her bus off in Catonsville.
If she gets back to Catonsville with the bus much later than she does now, or if her afternoon commute back into Howard County takes much longer than it currently does, she said, she’ll have to change her schedule at Giant.

“And I don’t want to have to do that,” she said.

Others at the meeting had their own concerns.

“It’s definitely going to be a bottleneck,” said William Statton, of Catonsville. “I’m retired, and it doesn’t matter what time I go out, it’s always heavy traffic (on Route 40).”

Julia Graham, an Oella resident, wanted to know what affect the project will have on the Patapsco State Park trails that wind beneath the bridge on both sides of the river.

Graham said community groups have been asking for a pedestrian bridge across the river for years so that the park’s trail system could form a “true loop,” and that she had hoped the bridge renovation project would include a pedestrian route.

“It makes absolutely no sense to me to be spending all this money without doing that,” she said.

An SHA official told her that the renovated bridge, once complete, will include five-foot-wide sidewalks on either side, but Graham said she was hoping for a separate, pedestrians-only bridge.

Karen and Ralph Lightner, of Ellicott City, said they came to the meeting out of curiosity.

“We just can’t imagine them building two separate bridges on either side of the original,” said Karen Lightner, who used to work at St. Agnes School in Catonsville, still attends church at the Catholic parish and uses the bridge often.
“Will it be structurally sound? Will it hold trucks?” she asked. (“Yes” and “yes,” SHA officials said.)

Then there was Ed and Clara Canter, longtime residents of Old Frederick Road in Catonsville who said they are happy to see the renovations moving forward.

“It’s about time,” Ed Canter, 78, said. “Just look at (the bridge). It’s deteriorating something fierce. Every time I get on it, I step on the gas.”

Clara Canter, 75, said it is nice to see an old bridge renovated instead of torn down and replaced.

“At our age, we’re glad to see that,” she said, adding that she and her husband have seen the bridge survive two hurricanes.

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