Baltimore Sun to Eastern Shore: Drop Dead Again
Once again, the Ivory Tower Liberals of the Editorial Board again display their disdain for all things Delmarva
All that’s old is new again with The Baltimore Sun Editorial Board.
Two years ago, The Editorial Board wrote that no replacement for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge should be built due to….climate change.
Well, they decided to pull that canard out again today and decided to throw in “equity” for good measure:
While there are surely reasonable actions to be taken, including devising better systems to manage existing traffic on the twin spans or adding transit options, building an entirely new and bigger bridge at a cost of $9 billion or more ought to be regarded as a non-starter. There are three big reasons.
The first is that justifying such investment requires one to ignore the threat of climate change. Sinking such an extraordinary sum into a bridge meant to last a half-century or more when rising sea levels are threatening to reshape much of Maryland’s waterfront much earlier than that seem ludicrous. It would also require state officials to ignore how waterfront development, particularly along the low-lying Eastern Shore, is destined for trouble as storms become more severe, tides roll higher and other climate change impacts make their mark on vulnerable communities. From this perspective, traffic tie-ups at Sandy Point seem almost helpful.
Secondly, there’s the related matter of how making it easier to cross the bay has inevitably put at risk important natural habitat on the Eastern Shore, including wetlands that filter Chesapeake waters and provide nurseries for important species of wildlife. This is the primary reason why many environmental groups have opposed a bridge expansion. Indeed, some were convinced that former Gov. Larry Hogan was so enamored of building a new bridge that the studies to date have been something of a sham — a hollow effort to meet the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act.
And finally, there’s the matter of how best to spend limited transportation dollars. Maryland doesn’t have $9 billion lying around, and if had such a sum, it ought to go toward advancing equity goals. The Red Line through Baltimore, for example, would help bring much-needed jobs to West Baltimore. A new Chesapeake Bay Bridge? Good for Ocean City business owners, perhaps, but not for historically marginalized communities.
There’s a lot of garbage there to digest….
Climate Change is a Crap Argument to Not Build a Bridge:
As I wrote back in 2021:
The need for a third span isn’t news, nor is it related to the environment. It’s related to the quality of life of people who live on both sides of the shore.
None of that has changed. Real people live and work on the Eastern Shore, doing a lot of the jobs that the Ivory Tower Elitists at the Sun would never dare dirty their hands to do.
Also, the argument about development remains a charade. As I wrote in 2021:
As part of their argument to “cap” traffic by not building a bridge, they suggest that the new bridge will create more waterfront development on the Eastern Shore. That argument, of course, doesn’t exactly pan out. The development either will or will not happen with or without a bridge. If the Sun wants to make an argument about the evils of waterfront development, that’s an unrelated and completely separate argument that is unrelated to the Bridge.
Habitats Weren’t a Concern Cheerleading for Windmills
The Sun has long been a cheerleader for windmills off of the cost of Ocean City. They did not seem to be particularly concerned about the impacts of windmills on the climate and natural habitats off of Ocean City because they serve the paper’s greater political interest than giving a lifeline to people living on the Eastern Shore. And that’s before we even address the fact that the windmills (and the climate industry over all) is little more than a corporatist racket.
The Equity of Liberalism Excludes Rural Folks
The Sun thinks that the money needed for a new Bay Bridge should instead be spent on “meeting equity goals.” So instead the money should be thrown at the Red Line project because it “would help bring much-needed jobs to West Baltimore.”
Is there any evidence of this? Of course not. But the equity argument also ignores that fact that Baltimore City gets a greater share of state funds per capita than just about anywhere in the state. And it also ignores the tremendous poverty in some parts of the Eastern Shore. Somerset County has a higher poverty rate than Baltimore City.
Where’s there equity? Why should be left behind so Baltimore City can get even more?
As I wrote two years ago:
A new Bay Bridge is needed for people who live on the shore and commute to the Western Shore. A new Bay Bridge is needed for people who live on the shore and go to a grocery store, so they can get food delivered in a timely manner. A new Bay Bridge is needed for businesses that do business on both sides of the shore. A new Bay Bridge is needed for people who live on the Eastern Shore and need emergency medical attention on the Western Shore. A new Bay Bridge is needed for farmers on the Eastern Shore who want to have their goods trucked to supermarkets on the Western Shore.
Making sure that people have jobs, making sure that people can eat, making sure that people can receive prompt medical attention are all very important things. They can be life and death matters when traffic is backed up and people sit for hours trying to get to the other side.
But, of course, the Ivory Tower elitists on the Sun Editorial Board don’t actually care about that. They care about scoring cheap political points about climate change. Which will not at all be affected by building a new bridge.
Ironically, climate change would be partially improved by the new bridge because relieving traffic will alleviate a certain level of ground-level pollution.
None of that has changed. We are still fighting the same fights that we fought when I first started writing about the new bridge 15 years ago. We just need to get the damn bridge built and cannot stop luddites like The Baltimore Sun Editorial Board who want to leave the Eastern Shore to suffer to stand in the way of progress.