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Mayor says Route 40 safety decisions rest with State Highway Administration; city urges joint corridor study
Summary
After resident concerns about accidents on U.S. 40 near Greenway Farms, Mayor Kirk Smith and the police chief told council that the state controls traffic signals and funding; the city called for a joint SHA–county–city corridor study and said it will advocate for state action.
Mayor Kirk Smith addressed public concern on Oct. 6 about traffic and safety along U.S. 40 where the Greenway Farms subdivision connects to the state highway. The mayor said the issue has generated public debate and a front-page newspaper story, and he set out the city’s legal and procedural position.
“Route 40 is a state highway,” Smith said. “The city is not in the business of building street traffic lights.” He told residents the State Highway Administration (SHA) has exclusive jurisdiction over design, timing and installation of signals on U.S. 40 and that any long-term changes or funding must come from SHA through an engineering study that meets national signal warrants.
Chief Kratz (Havre de Grace Police Department) presented crash-distribution figures the department reviewed from 2019 to the present. According to the figures Chief Kratz summarized, the highest share of reported incidents along the city’s Route 40 corridor occurred at the 40/Post Road (Revolution) intersection (approximately 32 percent of the corridor’s collisions), followed by 40/Lewis (approximately 25 percent), 40/Otsego (about 17 percent), 40/Blenheim (about 14 percent) and 40/Martha Lewis (about 11 percent). The chief’s comments were presented to show the problem is corridor-wide, not limited to a single intersection.
Smith said Greenway Farms received local approvals in phases dating to 2004, and that the planning commission’s 2020 approvals (for later phases) were final and outside the council’s ability to overturn. He warned that a unilateral attempt by the city to deny required building permits or alter a previous quasi-judicial approval could create legal exposure to the developer.
The mayor praised recent short-term safety measures SHA installed (a modified “right-in/right-out” configuration) but said long-term solutions will require coordinated, data-driven engineering by SHA. He asked SHA and Harford County to join the city in a corridor-scale study that would formally evaluate signal warrants and prioritize funding for intersections city residents identify as hazardous.
Mayor Smith urged residents with safety concerns to direct technical feedback to the Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration and to contact their state legislative delegation to advocate for study funding.
The city said it will prepare a draft council resolution to advocate for a coordinated SHA–county–city traffic study and to request SHA prioritization for corridor improvements. Any signal installation or major corridor redesign would require SHA engineering, approval and state funding.
