Maryland Route 8

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MD Route 8
Romancoke Road
Maintained by MDSHA
Length: 8.37 mi[1] (13.47 km)
Formed: 1953
South end: Romancoke Pier in Romancoke
Major
junctions:		 US 50 / US 301

MD 835A
MD 802
North end: MD 18 in Stevensville
Highways in Maryland
< MD 7 MD 10 >
State highways - Minor - Former - Turnpikes

Maryland Route 8 is a north/south Maryland state highway located entirely on Kent Island. It carries the name Business Parkway north of US 50/US 301 and Romancoke Road south of US 50/US 301, however the entire route is more commonly known by residents as Route 8. Route 8 serves as Kent Island's main north/south road, running from an intersection with Maryland Route 18 in Stevensville to Romancoke Pier, a fishing pier in Romancoke, near the southern end of the island.

Contents

[edit] Cities and towns

Route 8 passes through the following unincorporated areas of Kent Island.

[edit] Route description

From the north, MD 8 begins as a divided highway in Stevensville at the intersection of Main Street (MD 18) and Business Parkway (MD 18 north of Main Street and MD 8 south of it) this is also the beginning of the divided portion of Business Parkway. The next junction to the south is a diamond interchange with US 50/US 301. This is the first junction with 50/301 east of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and was the first to be upgraded from an at-grade intersection. Past this the road becomes known as Romancoke Road, and the divided portion ends shortly thereafter at MD 835A.

The next major intersection is with Bay City Road and the entrance to the Matapeake School Complex in Matapeake, which is the location of the newest and southernmost traffic light along the route. South of Bay City Road MD 8 is unsigned, however this portion is still well known to residents as "Route 8". Also south of here the route assumes a more rural setting.

Further onward, MD 8 reaches a section that has been realigned due to the older alignment's lack of shoulders. The former alignment is now designated MD 802 and an extension of Batt's Neck Road from MD 802 to MD 8 is secretly designated MD 8A. The realignment helped give this section of the road a 50 mile per hour speed limit.

The designation officially ends when the route passes the gates to the former Romancoke ferry landing. The ferry once linked Romancoke with Claiborne and was part of Maryland Route 33. This area is now a county park and in addition to being the southern terminus of MD 8 it is also the southern terminus of the Kent Island South Trail, which utilizes the shoulder of MD 8 on its final stretch toward the park.

[edit] Points of interest

[edit] Junction list

The entire route is in Queen Anne's County.

Location Mile Destinations Notes
Romancoke 0.0 Entrance to Romancoke Pier Southern terminus
0.96 Kent Point Road
Mattapex 3.09 Kentmorr Road / Wineland Way
Normans 4.23 MD 802 north (Batt's Neck Road)
4.56 Batt's Neck Road (MD 8A) A different Batt's Neck Road from MD 802
Matapeake 5.24 MD 802 south (Batt's Neck Road)
6.80 Bay City Road Southernmost traffic light and MD 8 signage
Stevensville 7.87 MD 835A (Thompson Creek Service Road, Pier One Road)
8.01 US 50 east / US 301 north (Blue Star Memorial Highway) – Easton Interchange
8.08 US 50 west / US 301 south (Blue Star Memorial Highway) – Annapolis
8.37 MD 18 (Business Parkway, Main Street, Skipjack Parkway) – Love Point, Stevensville Northern terminus.

[edit] History

What is now Route 8 is one of the oldest major roads on Kent Island, having existed as early as the 17th century in order to connect Kent Fort with Crayford (now Crafford Farm) and Broad Creek.

With the ferries to Annapolis, and Claiborne, the road received part of the Maryland Route 404 designation north of the access road for the Annapolis-Matapeake ferry. Since the ferry carried 404 to Anne Arundel County, the section of present-day Route 8 south of the access road was designated as part of Maryland Route 33, which was carried into Talbot County on the Romancoke-Claiborne ferry. In 1948, after U.S. Route 50 was routed onto the Eastern Shore, cutting 404 back to Wye Mills, MD 33 was extended north to the western end of 404's former overlapped section with Maryland Route 18. After the bridge opened in 1952, the easier access to Annapolis eliminated the need for a ferry to Talbot County, so the Romancoke-Claiborne ferry stopped running in 1953, leaving an orphaned section of MD 33 on Kent Island, which became redesignated MD 8.

[edit] Notable events

  • On July 27, 2004, a young woman from Bulgaria was struck by two vehicles while crossing Route 8 at night on a bicycle, leaving her with serious injuries.
  • On January 26, 2007, a collision involving a police officer occurred along a 50 mile-per-hour section of Route 8 through the neighborhood of Kent Island Estates.[2] The collision prompted two blocks of the route to be closed for several hours.

[edit] Safety concerns

Traffic generally moves swiftly along Route 8, making it a dangerous road for pedestrians as well as the drivers that have to look out for them. Because of this, certain safety measures were taken from 2001 to 2005 in order to help reduce the number of accidents along the road. The first of these is the Kent Island South Trail, which parallels Route 8. As of 2007, the trail ends at Matapeake State Park; the northern section, which is part of the trail's original plans[3] has not yet been built. The goal of the trail is to keep pedestrian traffic off of the shoulder of the road, allowing drivers to concentrate more on watching out for other automobiles instead of the numerous pedestrians that once used the shoulder. In addition to that, a short, one-way connector road that once served as an "exit ramp" from Route 8 onto Kent Point Road, a road that intersects Route 8, has been closed in favor of having drivers slow down to make a direct right turn onto Kent Point Road.

[edit] Notes

  • The southern end of Route 8 is at a fishing pier known as Romancoke Pier. A pier that once stood at that location served the Romancoke-Claiborne ferry and was later used for fishing after the ferry service was canceled. The old ferry pier was destroyed by Hurricane Isabel in September 2003 and was replaced with the current pier, which was completed and opened in November 2005. Because the original pier was destroyed by a hurricane, the replacement was constructed with funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
  • The northern end of Route 8 is at an intersection with Maryland Route 18 (Main Street). While the MD 8 designation ends at the intersection, the mainline (Business Parkway) continues northward, picking up the MD 18 designation for roughly four miles to Love Point; this is due to historical reasons.
  • Route 8 is the shortest single-digit Maryland state highway, not including the individual sections of Maryland Route 7.[4]

[edit] Related routes

[edit] See also

[edit] External links