Here’s Baltimore County’s vision thing for Towson in five or ten years, after several big development projects are built: you buy or rent a nice place downtown. You walk to work in a nearby shop or office so you don’t need a car. Or maybe you use a bike. There will be bike racks everywhere. Or, you take a bus.
David Marks, Towson’s county councilman, wants a commuter bus for Towson like the Charm City Circulator in downtown Baltimore. “We can’t build any more roads,” Marks says. We’ve got to embrace biking, pedestrian activities and we absolutely have to have a transit circulator in place.”
If the narration stylings of the Baltimore County promotional video are any indication of what will happen, Towson is in trouble.
The nice thing about Bethesda is that DC has a majorly better mass transit system. You can get out of Bethesda and to just about anywhere in DC without a car. You can’t do that in Baltimore, so you’d be sort of “Trapped In Towson.”
Could Towson survive the increase in population density and parking? I’m guessing the retails along York RD will just have to fold or go upscale to cater to all of the new rich people living, walking and biking in Towson.
Bethesda has become a very vertical city. I have seen it change since the 1970s when I worked there. Towson lacks that verticality at the moment and as a result feels more open. Verticality means more square footage to rent and/or sell; a business decision. Is it the right thing to do or is it just a “because we can” thing or simply a case of misguided “Bethesda Envy?”
Has BGE been consulted about how much more energy this development would pull from the grid? I live in Ruxton. I would not be happy if developing Towson would cause rolling brown outs on a system that BGE is already trying to bolster by cutting back electricity during peak times. Would you?