Residents petition for traffic study of New Market area

Thursday, Dec. 15, 2005

Six hundred Frederick County residents signed a petition recently asking county commissioners to fund a thorough, independent traffic study of southeastern Frederick County as part of the New Market Region Plan update.

The region plan outlines future growth from the eastern Frederick city limits to Carroll County and from Ijamsville Road north to Gas House Pike. The plan estimates an additional 36,000 residents will live in 13,000 new homes by 2025.

The commissioners voted 3-2 at an Oct. 24 meeting to wait for independent traffic studies from local developers before making decisions on funding a New Market regional traffic study.

Two county commissioners responded via e-mail to the petition in the last several weeks.

Commissioners John ‘‘Lennie” Thompson Jr. (R) and Jan H. Gardner (D), e-mailed the Frederick Regional Action Network and Friends of Frederick County, the two groups that coordinated the petition. Gardner responded on Dec. 7 and agreed with the need for a comprehensive traffic study that evaluates more than a small portion of the region.

Land Stewards LLC, developer of Eaglehead and owners of the Casey property in New Market, will conduct studies that determine the impact their neighborhoods will have on local roads.

County planners will then make comments and recommendations before submitting them to the county commissioners. If the studies are not adequate, then the commissioners are expected to fund a more extensive study.

Commissioner Michael L. Cady (R) said in a previous interview that the two dense developments comprise the bulk of the region plan and should provide valuable information for a traffic study.

Jack Lynch, vice-chair of Friends of Frederick County, said the Land Stewards study is complete, but is insufficient.

‘‘It’s just not sufficient to what the Maryland Planning Department recommended,” he said.

In an Oct. 3 letter, the Maryland Planning Department recommended an independent, thorough traffic study to show the impact additional cars would have on existing roads in the New Market area.

The department said the current traffic studies used out-of-date information and used a different formula from the one recommended by the planning department.

The commissioners will piece the final region plan together using three documents – a 1995 zoning plan, the 2003 county planning staff draft and the recently submitted planning commission draft.

The planning commission draft was reviewed by the state planning department which said, in an Oct. 3 letter, that the region plan did not agree with the county’s long-term growth goals.

In their petition, the activist groups and residents also asked commissioners to deny new developments in the region because the projected growth limit has already been met with approved developments.

Commissioner Gardner agreed and has developed a handout called ‘‘The Line-Up” that lists the timeline of when properties were approved for rezoning.

She said that property owners should wait in chronological order to be approved for rezoning and special treatment should not be given to any property owners.

Commissioner Thompson responded to the two activist groups on Nov. 30, writing that while he would reserve his final judgment until the public input process was over, he did not want to see extensive rezoning.

‘‘I am not inclined to follow the Planning Commission’s suggestion that we turn the New Market region over to the developers via massive rezoning of farmland.”

The next hearing on the New Market Region Plan is scheduled for 9 a.m., Jan. 9, at Winchester Hall, 12 E. Church St., Frederick.