what lurks beneath

traffic has calmed at Charles Street & Saratoga, although crews are still working to repair conduit damaged by Monday's underground fire

The Sun's Doug Donovan and Jessica Anderson had an interesting article today about the tangled web of public and private utilities underneath our streets.

Most of us are vaguely aware of power and sewer lines running below ground but have little idea just how complicated it all is. Donovan & Anderson write:

"Strung beneath the streets of Baltimore are 10 million linear feet of utility lines carrying electricity, cable, telephone, street light and fiber-optic service, city officials said. . . The lines are threaded through 3.7 million feet of conduits and accessible by 14,000 manholes, [Department of Transportation spokesperson David] Brown said.

"The department's conduit division manages the critical system with a $7.5 million budget, including about $3 million for improvements, $2.5 million for construction and maintenance and $475,000 for inspection and testing, budget documents show.Many private contractors, utility operations and telecommunication companies lease space in the conduit system from the city. The biggest tenants include BGE, Verizon and Comcast. Their lines are typically encased in cables that are strung through concrete holes that open into 6-by-12-foot access areas beneath manhole covers."

The Partnership's Streetscape initiative has brought us close to this complexity more than once. That program has invested more than $29 million over the past eight years to improve 88 block faces.

An important part of the program isn't just prettying things up at street level, with repaving, new sidewalks, better lighting, and landscaping. It's also about updating conduit and utilities that, as we've seen with Charles Street, can cause major problems when they fail.

The challenge to planning conduit improvements, or to fixing situations like the one on Charles Street, is that nobody really knows for sure what's going on down there. Maps and plans tend to be outdated or unreliable. Contractors for all the different entities with sub-grade utilities can sometimes move things around. Even with the use of ultrasonic equipment to try to map conduit, you may be surprised by what you find once you open up the street for improvements.

Which is why it can be difficult (and take longer than anyone expects) for necessary repairs to happen.

-Mike Evitts

basilica prayer garden

Anyone wondering what was going to happen to the plot of land where the Rochambeau once stood got their answer last Friday when the Baltimore Archdiocese broke ground on the Pope John Paul II Prayer Garden.

What's currently a grassy field will become a $1.5 million green space along a well-traveled portion of Charles Street (at Franklin). It will feature a winding path of flowers and shade trees, and a monument to Pope John Paul II designed by Baltimore-born artist Joseph Sheppherd.

Artists rendering of the prayer garden coming to Charles & Franklin Streets, courtesy of Mahan Rykiel Associates.

A large scrim will cover the portion of the Franklin Street garage that overlooks the park. Everything should be ready in a couple of months.

Hopefully, the completed space will cast its zen vibe out to calm drivers as they pass by. During the groundbreaking, the speakers were occasionally drowned out by loud trucks and honking motorists. Otherwise, it could be a noisy place to find inner calm.

-m.e.