The Dobbin Dot to Dot

Today’s Google Doodle honors the long and winding Appalachian Trail.

Image from Google Doodle, October 2, 2023

But I have a shorter distance in mind: Dobbin Road, between Route 175 and Oakland Mills Road.

All images taken from Google Maps

You may say it’s laughable to compare the two. They do have something in common, however. I am no more likely to hike that stretch of Dobbin than I am to attempt traversing the Appalachian Trail. I mean - - why would you? Possibly just to say you did?

But all of those dots represent businesses that employ people who might want to connect with another one of those dots along the road without having to get in their car to do so. An office worker wants to get lunch. A restaurant worker wants to nip out to get medicine for a headache. Someone from the MVA wants to pick up some yarn to knit on their lunch break. 

Add to that anyone who’d like to get around by bicycle to do all of those things and more that I haven’t even thought of.

This stretch of Dobbin has long been a lamentable land of missed connections. If you don’t want to drive, you can’t get there from here. Or, more accurately: you can’t get from there to there. Not very easily, anyway. Not without feeling as though you’re flying in the face of suburban convention.

That is why I was excited to see this news.

Howard County Executive Calvin Ball has announced that the County has been awarded a transformational $4 million grant from the State of Maryland for the construction of a critical 1.4-mile shared use pathway along the east side of Dobbin Road from Oakland Mills Road to Maryland State Highway Administration MD 175. This funding builds on the County’s recent efforts to create a more robust, accessible and inclusive transportation system for all users.  - - Howard County Government 

Image from Howard County Government 

This project will make it easier and safer to use Dobbin Road as a pedestrian and as a biker. I have seen plenty of comments on social media through the years from folks who would gladly walk from point to point rather than have to get back in their cars. Traffic on Dobbin is routinely snarled during high use times of day because it is accommodating people who are:

• headed to a point on Dobbin from elsewhere 
• using Dobbin as a through street to go somewhere else
• going from point to point along the way

Adding the capability to walk and or bike isn’t simply some kind of “virtue signaling” nod to pedestrians and bicyclists. It’s also going to get cars off the road, especially during times of peak use. That’s better for everyone.*

As you might imagine, comments on this initiative were mixed. The number that understood the positive impact this will have was heartening. I am assuming that person who said that “we don’t need sidewalks because there’s grass” has never tried to make their way over that grass with a stroller or in a wheelchair. 

Columbia has always been great for recreational walking. This project makes us better at (functional? utilitarian?) walking. And biking. Sorry, I keep forgetting that bit.

Now, I wonder who I need to talk to to get an overhead bridge from the Jiffy Lube to Starbucks. That’s the connection I always think about when I’m over there…

Comments? You know where to go.

*To learn more about this project, visit www.howardcountymd.gov/News092723