9/20/2006

Recounting a tale of two routes
By Tom Range, Sr.

Whenever elected officials are questioned regarding the dualization of Route 589 (dualization being the widening of the route to two traffic lanes going in each direction), they intone the mantra "when the dualization of Route 113 is completed."  The officials seldom supply a time frame in which the Route 113 project will be completed.

Route 113 crosses the Maryland-Delaware state line at Selbyville, originating farther north toward Wilmington.  It has its origins in the Du Pont Road, funded as a gift to the people of Delaware by Coleman Du Pont.  Maps of Worcester County dating back to the 1920s identify what is now Route 113 as being part of what was romantically named the Del-Mar-Va Trail.  Promotional material provided by the Snow Hill municipal government reads "Snow Hill is located on the new Del-Mar-Va Trail, the shortest route from New York to Florida via Wilmington, Delaware, Cape Charles and Norfolk, Virginia."

The thrust of this boosterism was primarily to entice the southbound tourist trade to traverse by automobile the Eastern Shore rather than following interstate routes on the other side of the bay.  A further attraction to what is now Route 113 was its being an alternate route for produce and manufactured products to the northern markets, as motor trucks replaced the railroads as the major means of transportation.

As the decades passed, the usage of Route 113 increased, along with fatalities from traffic accidents.  By 1998, the dualization of this interstate route by the state of Maryland had begun from Berlin north to the state line, a distance of 8.43 miles.  The justification for the project was stated as "The U.S. 113 corridor is experiencing deterioration in safety and service due to increasing seasonal traffic volume coupled with local commercial/residential development along the highway.  This project will improve the highway's safety and serviceability."  This first stage in dualizing Route 113, from Berlin to the state line, is now completed.  The ongoing project is to dualize the route from Berlin to a point south of Snow Hill, to hook up with the existing dualized section at Snow Hill down to Pocomoke City, where Route 113 is absorbed into Route 13.  The Berlin-Snow Hill segment is 13.12 miles.  Approximately a four-mile stretch is currently under construction.

A close scrutiny of signage along Route 113 reveals that the route number appears in a shield, indicating that it is a part of a federal highways project.  As such, improvements are entitled to federal assistance.  In the early days of the Route 113 dualization from Berlin north to the Delaware state line, federal aid approximated 70 percent of total expenditures.  In June 1998, President Clinton signed the Federal Highway Authorization Bill.  Representative Wayne Gilchrest, representing the First Congressional District of Maryland in the House of Representatives announced that the bill included $25 million to dualize Route 113.  In that period of federal budget surpluses, funding could be reasonably anticipated.  Under current conditions, with huge federal deficits resulting from the war on terrorism, the occupation of Iraq, increased border security, and the recovery efforts resulting from Hurricane Katrina, the availability of ongoing federal funding is problematical.

Glancing at the signage identifying Route 589, the motorist will note that the number designation is enclosed in a rectangle, indicating that it is a state road and not eligible for federal aid.  A further contrast between the two routes is that Route 113 is categorized as an arterial highway and Route 589 a major collector highway, a lesser category.  Route 589 was formed from the combining of a number of rural routes, little more than gravel farm roads, extending generally in a southeast direction from Route 113 to Route 90 then south to terminate at the U.S. Route 50.  There were few concentrations of populated areas until the development of Ocean Pines beginning in the 1970s.  In the late 1870s the current Route 589 was designated Road 657.  The Cathell Road in this period came straight east to meet Road 657 that began at the St. Martin's Church building, which still exists as a monument/landmark on a stub of the old Route 113 near the start of the current Route 589.  Road 657 fed into Road 525 past Taylorville to the junction of what is now Route 707 in the area known as Greys Corner.

Unlike Route 113, there is little commercial traffic on Route 589.  Tourist traffic is drawn to the 4.5 mile route by events staged at Ocean Downs Racetrack at the southern terminus of the route, hence its name Racetrack Road.  County planning maps show a 100-foot wide corridor for the length of Route 589, which should be sufficient for dualization.  Each of the four lanes would be 12 feet in width, for a total of 48 feet. Any median strip, and shoulders and drainage ditches on each side of the road, will have to be factored in to the 100-foot dimension.

Like the citizen activist group Concerned Residents Action for Safer Highways (CRASH) formed in 1994, which spearheaded the successful effort of dualizing Route 113, the group Safe Travel Along Route 589 (STAR589) has been formed to apply similar political pressure for the ultimate dualization of Route 589.

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