St. Mary’s County has let state money for sidewalks and bike paths go unclaimed because no one on staff has time to chase it, a bicycle advocate told the county’s Transportation Advisory Committee on Oct. 15.
Frank Allen, who leads the Patuxent Tidewater Land Trust and a regional cycling group, said a couple of state grant programs open at the same time every year, and the county has not been able to apply for some of them. He estimated the county has let “a couple of million dollars” slip as a result. He did not say which grants or years, and the county has not published a tally of missed applications.
Those grants often pay for the first steps of a project, such as initial studies and 30% design, Allen said. Without that groundwork, a project cannot get to construction.
He said the county could use one or two people dedicated to writing grant proposals. In the past, he said, one Recreation and Parks employee handled that work for the Three Notch Trail as an extra duty on top of a full job. He offered to help with his own contracting experience and suggested the county tap its many retirees with similar backgrounds. A committee member noted it was not the first time the need for county grant writers had come up.
Cheap fixes first
Allen is president of the Patuxent Tidewater Land Trust, which joined the American Chestnut Land Trust in Calvert County to start the Southern Maryland Active Recreation and Transport Alliance. The alliance is a friends group with no formal membership that pushes for safe walking and biking across the region and works with the Tri-County Council for Southern Maryland’s Bicycle Infrastructure Advisory Committee.
His pitch leaned on low-cost, incremental changes. A good sidewalk or bike network can serve as the “last mile” for St. Mary’s Transit System riders, he said, noting that many everyday trips are three miles or less. Every trip made on foot or by bike is one less car on the road and one less parking space taken, whether on crowded Willows Road or at the county’s playing fields on Saturdays.
On MD 235, Allen said the State Highway Administration’s earlier idea of giving up a turn lane for a path north of Great Mills Road was the wrong spot. The state dropped that turn-lane plan after public pushback. South of Great Mills Road, though, Allen said the center turning lane is so wide that narrowing it would leave room for shoulders and a side path all the way to the Gate 3 entrance of Naval Air Station Patuxent River.
A committee member urged going further, with bike lanes separated from traffic by bollards or another physical barrier. Research shows far more people will ride when a lane is protected rather than just painted, the member said.
Allen agreed and pointed to smaller steps. When the state lowered the speed limit on Park Hall Road by 5 mph and added rumble strips, he said, it felt safe enough for him to ride there. He suggested the county try the same on short county roads such as Trap Road south of St. Inigoes, where a lower limit would add only seconds to a drive.
Other ideas were even cheaper. He has seen people walking bicycles along MD 5 toward Newtowne Neck Road and suggested wood chips along the roadside as a temporary path until development there brings permanent improvements. Paths his group helped cut through Nicolet Park last year, mostly by clearing brush and laying wood chips, are now heavily used, he said. He also floated a safer link between the Lexington Park YMCA and the neighborhoods behind it, where people now use an informal path along the Great Mills High School fence line, possibly through a utility right-of-way with fencing for the two neighbors.
Getting into Leonardtown
Allen said the hardest gap is getting into Leonardtown on foot or bike from the north or south. Planned work on MD 245 will help from that direction, he said, but the Potomac Heritage Trail, which nominally runs through the county, has no safe route around the county seat.
Asked how to get more out of the state, Allen said the first step is putting projects on the county’s annual request letter. If a project is not in the letter or the comprehensive plan, he said, it will not happen. The county’s fiscal 2027 priority letter to the Maryland Department of Transportation, signed March 24, does ask for a study of a sidewalk or hiker-biker connection from Leonardtown along MD 245 to the Three Notch Trail. It also asks the state to fund more Three Notch Trail phases and a trail link along FDR Boulevard between MD 235 and MD 4.
The state’s budget is tight, Allen said, but in his conversations with the State Highway Administration, sidewalk and trail projects are among the few road-related projects still getting funded. He is also pushing a Maryland capital trail for the state’s next anniversary, stitched mostly from existing shoulders and side paths, including the FDR Boulevard trails.
Questions for the state
Earlier in the meeting, a committee member asked about two long-awaited fixes on MD 235 in California, questions the county’s transportation director was not there to answer.
One is the long-discussed plan to make the north end of FDR Boulevard at Three Notch Road a full-movement signalized intersection, so drivers could turn left onto northbound MD 235. The member said the county’s transportation director had described it as in the works about a year and a half ago. A full-movement signal at MD 235 and FDR Boulevard ranks fourth among the top five requests in the county’s fiscal 2027 letter to the state.
The other is the intersection of MD 4 and MD 235, where the state installed new traffic signals that have not been turned on, the member said. Staff said they would seek answers and respond.
Residents can weigh in on the next stretch of FDR Boulevard at the county’s second community meeting on the FDR Boulevard Extension Planning Study, from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 21, at the Lexington Park Library, with a presentation at 5:30 p.m. The study looks at extending the road from Pegg Road to Great Mills Road. Details are on the county’s project page.
