Magnetic Levitation Train: A Way to Get Baltimore-Washington Area on Track
Consolidated metropolitan statistical area: economic powerhouse, statistical revision of political boundaries or a bureaucratic board game?</br></br>There are those who say it's a little of all of the above, though the term economic powerhouse may hold out too big a promise of something greater than what exists.</br></br>A statistical merger of two or more neighboring urban complexes into a consolidated metropolitan statistical area (CMSA) nevertheless implies that they have developed naturally into an economically potent megalopolis.</br></br>The pending designation, then, of the Washington and Baltimore regions as a CMSA merely affirms what most of us already know. Explosive population growth in the 1970s and 1980s, extensive commuting between the two areas and development of stronger economic ties have drawn the Washington and Baltimore regions together in a common market.</br></br>A recession and feeble advances toward a recovery notwithstanding, the vast area anchored by metropolitan Washington and Baltimore has been, for some time, one of the stronger economic regions in the United States. The combined populations of the two adjoining metropolitan areas, plus those of outlying counties that will be added to the new CMSA, already exceed 6 million, making it the country's fourth largest urban area. Only the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, Los Angeles-Anaheim-Riverside and Chicago-Gary-Lake County CMSAs are larger.