The season is underway in Ocean City. For the last several years, Cruisin weekend has signaled the start of the peak tourism season in Ocean City and that should be no different this year. Early indications, such as building traffic all week and an excellent weather forecast, are this weekend will see huge crowds.
Back-to-back Cruisin and Memorial Day weekends start the season with a bang every year, so long as there is cooperation from Mother Nature, who has been providing some of the best spring weather in recent years. It has not rained since May 1 when .31 inches of rain fell overnight.
If it seems like this May is busier than usual, it’s probably because of how the calendar stacked the events this year. It was Springfest last weekend, Cruisin this weekend and Memorial Day next weekend. It’s been a busy start because Springfest weekend exceeded expectations, largely due to the perfect weather. As usual, the weather rules around here and so far it’s been most cooperative. Let’s hope it continues.
It’s nearly impossible to gauge with any certainty whether Ocean City’s and Worcester County’s combined $200,000 contribution to the independent movie “Ping Pong Summer” was a wise investment.
Did it give the town great exposure to audiences unfamiliar with it? How many people actually saw the movie? Was Ocean City positively portrayed in the movie? Did it provide beneficial marketing for the resort?
I personally found the movie to be a huge disappointment. I went in with low expectations, despite the advance billing from those close to it. It was dull and I had a difficult time sitting through it. The storyline was weak and even the musical selections were a letdown. The local scenery was nice but there was not enough of it.
I don’t think the gamble of infusing public dollars into the movie paid off. In hindsight, it was not the right decision, but I thought it was a worthy gamble at the time. The final product was simply not any good in my view.
Although Ocean City and the county governments will each receive $30,000 from their combined $200,000 investment, the biggest economic impact was probably when the film was actually being filmed in Ocean City. The crews and actors supported the area restaurants and hotels while they were in Ocean City for those few weeks in the fall of 2012.
The biggest positive out of the whole thing was probably that some inspiring actors and actresses with local roots had a chance to do their thing at a young age. Without question, they were able to take their incredible experiences with the movie and the well-known cast and improve their trade. That was a positive and the unique and memorable experience they all had cannot be diminished.
A “road diet” plan for Coastal Highway that once looked impractical and unrealistic no longer appears that way.
After its grand plan to reduce a busy stretch of Coastal Highway from eight lanes to six lanes with a renewed focus on pedestrian and bicycle safety and mass transit was summarily dismissed earlier this year by members of the Transportation Committee, the State Highway Administration asked for another chance to explain what it had in mind. This week it returned armed with endorsements from City Engineer Terry McGean and Public Works Director Hal Adkins.
The idea is to make major changes to the highway infrastructure over a 1.4-mile stretch from the Route 90 Bridge entrance to Ocean City to Convention Center Drive. Along with moving from eight travel lanes to six, SHA’s favored design doubles the size of the sidewalk from five feet to 10 feet, creates a 15-foot bus/bike lane and two 12-foot travel lanes and keeps the median at 14 feet.
Although city elected officials appear skeptical of the plan amid fears it will enhance traffic woes, McGean and Adkins both agreed it’s the wave of the future.
“From what I have seen in the traffic studies, the worst case scenario is a 92-second increase in travel time, and we get 10-foot sidewalks, and two less lanes of traffic to cross,” McGean said. “It is controversial but it might be one of the best things in terms of a legacy moving forward in the city doing this. When it comes to pedestrian safety, we have done all that we can with the configuration that we have and I would like to see us move towards the 3 lane option.”
Adkins added, “The big picture I have always desired or envisioned … is the entire Coastal Hwy. corridor is the three-lane configuration with 10-foot sidewalks with a transit bike lane only. We will become nationally known as the town of mobility via mass transit … you will set the stage where we could be running 65 buses at one time.”
Sure it’s a tight budget year that will feature a major property tax increase for all residents, but I think Worcester County was wrong to cut $65,000 from its budget to record its meetings. There has to be a way to post these videos without that huge price tag, even if the quality is not what it should be.
Worcester County is currently one of the few jurisdictions that does not record its meetings and post on the Internet for public consumption. Changing that was a priority of new Commissioner Joe Mitrecic, but the commissioners decided in a 4-3 vote to scrap the funds from the budget altogether, putting the project on the shelf, at least temporarily.