Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 17:15:21 -0500
From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at press.jhu.edu>
To: <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Baltington?  Washimore?
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

> kfl at KeithLynch.net 11/12/04 8:56:41 PM >>>
>"Ted White" <twhite8 at cox.net> wrote:
>
>> Significantly, when Baltimore designed its subway it did so
>with an
>> eye to making it fully compatible with DC's Metro, and the
>lines will
>> eventually link -- either in Columbia, or, equally likely, at
>BWI.
>
>Sure.  Just a few decades after the first permanent manned
>base on
>Mars is established.  Perhaps my grandchildren will live to see
>it.
>Haven't you noticed how slowly Metro grows?

Well, it was part of the original Baltimore subway plan (and I suspect
the DC plan).  Unfortunately, by the time the subway was built, the
allocated money would only get the wimpy system currently in place in
Baltimore.  So it goes.

>
>Perhaps then it will make sense to regard DC and Baltimore as
>one
>city.  But not today.
>
>> Both areas have distinct identities, but they've been closely
>linked
>> ever since the Baltimore-Washington Parkway Expressway
>Redundancy
>> opened in the mid-'50s (and all the more so since I-95).
>
>I don't know when they were first linked by road or by railroad,
>but
>both probably go back at least 150 years.  That doesn't
>meake them
>one city.

True enough.  But statistically, there's this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_metropolitan_area

>The distance between our Virginia and Maryland meeting
>places is far
>shorter, and is far better linked by both road and by transit, but
>about half the people who go to our Virginia meetings
>(inlcuding you)
>almost never go to our Maryland meetings, and vice versa.
>
>And how many people go to both WSFA and BSFS meetings?
>Just one, as
>far as I know.
>
>Plenty of WSFAns go to Balticon, but these are people who
>tend to go
>to other out-of-town cons, too.

mjw