A state delegate is making plans to protest the lack of funding for Route 1 improvements at an upcoming State Highway Administration meeting.
The state recently deferred $1.1 billion in transportation projects in response to a possible $1 billion deficit in the next fiscal year. Postponed funding includes $8 million for preliminary engineering and design work for upgrades for Route 1 between University Boulevard and College Avenue.
Del. Joseline Peña-Melnyk (D- Anne Arundel and Prince George's), a former member of the College Park city council and one of many state legislators who pushed for the Route 1 improvements for years, is rallying community leaders to demonstrate an objection to the cuts.
"Basically, we want to be able to tell the state that we're not happy with that decision, that we care about Route 1 enough to protest," she said. "College Park will be heard."
Stephanie Stullich, a District 3 College Park councilwoman, said the condition of Route 1 is hurting the city's ability to improve its retail offerings, which consistently draw complaints from students and other members of the community.
"Everyone has complained for years about how unattractive Route 1 is, and it really holds back our ability to redevelop our commercial retail corridor through the city," Stullich said. "It [also] has a big impact on our community in terms of the traffic tie-ups and in terms of the safety issue."
Peña-Melnyk and other College Park city officials have long complained that the under-construction Intercounty Connector - a 18-mile highway intended to connect Laurel and Gaithersburg - benefits only Montgomery County residents, while draining the state's transportation budget.
By diverting funds from the ICC, Peña-Melnyk said, "you will have money for many projects" including Route 1, even in the state's current budget crisis.
The $8 million deferment from Route 1 design funding was one small part of a broader $110 million project to provide greater pedestrian safety, improved traffic flow and better appearances to the highway. The money was earmarked for design work only, not actual construction, she said.
Peña-Melnyk said funding is important not only as a necessary step toward rebuilding the highway but also as a symbolic gesture of state interest in improving Route 1, as the first significant state investment in the highway in decades.
"We worked hard for those $8 million; now it was taken away," she said. "And we want to do a march to tell State Highway that we're not satisfied with this. We need this road fixed. It has not gotten any money or support for the last 40 years."
Peña-Melnyk led a previous protest in 2005 to get the $8 million in design money, where she and several dozen local residents and officials demonstrated by walking up Route 1. That demonstration was timed with a State Highway Administration meeting in Greenbelt, as will this year's, she said.
District 4 Councilwoman Mary Cook said that effort "created a mild uproar" and credits it with generating increased awareness of public dissatisfaction with the condition of Route 1, awareness that led to the $8 million.
But with that money for Route 1 deferred, Cook feels it's time to do "something big like that" again.
"There's no way we can keep the status quo on Route 1," Cook said. "I think everybody wants a better flow of traffic and they want it to be safer. Whatever Peña-Melnyk is going to do, I'll be right behind her."
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