You still can’t cross the Potomac River in your car or bike or moped in any coherent, quick, functional way north of the American Legion Bridge in Montgomery County in 2024. Need to go to Dulles airport? You’ll have to go down to the beltway, fight traffic around it, and then back up, along the Potomac River towards Sterling, VA. That’s the only way to go.
Unless you want to drive up to Frederick County, down to Point of Rocks and allllll the way back down past Leesburg, VA. A potential 30-minute trip from points in Rockville or Olney, MD just became one hour or more.
But what do the local politicians in MoCo care? You shouldn’t be flying, anyway. That’s too much carbon. That’s a privilege for CE Marc Elrich, when he goes to China to recruit Communist, er, capitalist businesses to “relocate” to MoCo and grow our jobs base. Flying is for the politicians, not for the regulars. The constant traffic on the American Legion Bridge? That’s just progressive progress in the year 2024.
Anyway, what caught my eye this week was this Montgomery History featured webinar coming up about “90 years of Potomac River ferries”. Here is the description on what to expect:
White’s Ferry was a living history example of a long tradition of Potomac River ferries tying together Montgomery County and northern Virginia until it ceased operating recently. And when the C&O Canal was operational for nearly 90 years, White’s, along with Edwards and Spinks Ferries upcounty, took on added importance. This presentation offers a wealth of new research conducted to support the case for reopening White’s Ferry.
This isn’t to dig at Montgomery History, which does some solid work in exposing and unearthing our local history. I’d recommend tuning in to some of their events.
But how incredible is the statement in 2024? A 90-year old transport technology is lauded as being something we should aspire to “reopen” some day soon. No… we should be aspiring to build multiple bridges (yes, including one for a metro or something similar) across the Potomac right now to connect Northern VA and booming Loudon County to Montgomery County. Reopening a small ferry port is fine, but that won’t get the job done in 2024.
New bridges and connections would lead to an increased flow of goods and people across the river, which would be fantastic for both Maryland and Virginia. This is proven economics. This is the whole reason urban planners laud trains and metro bridges and tunnels under and over water.
Which is why it’ll be ignored. Punted. Never planned for. Ten years from now this exact same article can be posted, guaranteed. This exact same Montgomery History “webinar” might be brought up. Who knows, maybe a “ferry service” will be rebooted in the decade to come. A ribbon cutting ceremony will no doubt occur as twenty cars wait 10 minutes to be ferried across the Potomac River near Poolesville.
Progress? This isn’t even stagnation, this is regression. A return to a nearly pre-industrial era of transport in MoCo. More to come.
