Dayhoff Soundtrack: 20060802 Building ramps to information highway

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

20060802 Building ramps to information highway

Building ramps to information highway will pave the way to Carroll's future

08/02/06 Westminster Eagle column By Kevin E. Dayhoff

Posts on “Soundtrack” and information on Technology and Wi-Fi:

Technology Wi-Fi, Technology

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The politics and economics of roads, growth, development, business and agriculture have always played a prominent role in Carroll County.

In 1804, the Maryland legislature chartered the Baltimore and Reisterstown Turnpike Co. to build a macadam road to the Mason-Dixon Line. The road was completed in 1807 at a cost of $1.5 million.

That road is essentially what we now know as Old Baltimore Boulevard, running parallel to Route 140 from Westminster to Finksburg.

It was built to replace an old wagon trail that predated the French and Indian War and primarily to facilitate the movement of agricultural products to markets outside the county.

In those days, Baltimore was the third-largest city in the United States and the terminus of seven turnpikes. The turnpike to the Mason Dixon line aimed to attract trade from southern Pennsylvania to Baltimore - and away from Philadelphia.

According to Carol Lee's "Legacy of the Land," as Carroll County and the nation were climbing out of economic panic of 1837, Baltimore became "the main canning center for supplying food to the California miners and the rapidly developing west."

"For Carroll County's farmers," she continued, "these economic forces brought incentives to expand agriculture."

Ms. Lee writes that in the 1840s, "Transportation was still key to marketing and the [over-crowded] county's roads were still in terrible condition. ... Citizen's petitions to the county commissioners constantly complained about the 'hard, circuitous routes we are obliged to travel.' "

We can learn from Carroll County's resolution of this issue in the mid-1800s. Instead of exporting jobs and raw materials over inadequate roads to the canneries in Baltimore, Benjamin F. Shriver "founded the first canning company [in Carroll] in 1869" and used railroads, still a relatively new form of transportation, to move his products.

Today's technology highway, offers Carroll a similar alternative. That highway includes wireless fidelity, or Wi-Fi, a high-frequency local area network that provides Internet access.

Much of the raw material that Carroll County is exporting today is in the form of the skills and intellectual capacity. Every work day, 62 percent of our work force travels to jobs elsewhere, adding to the congestion on our roads.

The roads of yesterday now encourage suburban sprawl. Roads and (until recently) cheap gas allowed citizens to keep high-paying jobs outside of Carroll County while moving here to enjoy our high quality of life - negatively affecting our quality of life in the process.

Investment in the technology highway has no deleterious affect on land use or agriculture. Investment in yesterday's pre-French and Indian War roads will bring us more congestion, ultimately requiring us all to dig into our pockets and put more money into schools and infrastructure made necessary by the inevitable residential development of agricultural land.

As we manage residential growth, we need to adjust our focus toward supporting existing businesses (of which agriculture is still the biggest) and attracting more jobs to Carroll County.

In the next 20 years, Maryland's population will increase by one million.

Not all of the new folks have to live in Carroll County, but if we build the roads and make the land available, they will come - and fighting for more roads they can more easily travel out of the county to a high-paying jobs is not the answer.

The answer is developing more jobs right here in Carroll County.

The only highway Carroll should be interested in these days is the information-technology highway. Rather than a road, build a Wi-Fi highway to bring jobs and improve our quality of life.

Kevin Dayhoff writes from Westminster. E-mail him at kdayhoff AT carr.org.