Hutzell: The speed limit is about to drop on a dangerous Annapolis road. Get your tickets now.

Annapolis has good bones. You can see it in the spoke-and-wheel streets of the historic city’s beautiful center.

And it has bones ready to break.

Almost 60,000 cars and trucks enter Annapolis on Forest Drive every day, one of the ugliest, most dangerous roads in Anne Arundel County.

Come Monday, the county will lower the speed limit from 40 to 35 mph, the first big step in a $10 million plan to make this dysfunctional back door to Maryland’s state capital safer.

“It’s a good start,” Alderman Brooks Schandelmeier said. “It’s an overbuilt road.”

It’s just not going to be enough.

For those who drive Forest Drive daily, the speed limit is more of a suggestion. The actual speed — the way people drive — is set by time of day, time of year and the fluid dynamics of moment-to-moment traffic flow.

Are commuters flooding out toward Route 50 and Interstate 97, or queuing up to get past the first congestion choke point at Chinquapin Round Road?

Are big yellow school buses crawling along the 2.75-mile corridor picking up students? Are tractor trailers hauling luxury yachts under power lines toward a berth in the fall boat shows?

Is it a rare day when the traffic sets just so, letting you surf from green to green through all 11 signals between Chinquapin Round and Arundel on the Bay Road?

Real-life max speed is 30 mph.

Or it’s 50.

Or it’s zero if a driver doing 50 mph smacks into someone trying to squeak out of a driveway or parking lot entrance into moving traffic. Zero can last for hours if the crash shuts down Forest Drive and the tail end of the corridor, where the street name changes to Bay Ridge Road.

Message boards are up now, blinking out a warning that change is coming. Drivers will get a little grace period to relearn the road.

Annapolis Police will issue warnings to violators for 15 days. Citations start in August.

There are two county speed cameras on Forest Drive, both at the Annapolis Middle School crosswalks. Neither city nor county police would say whether more cameras are coming.

“I’m happy to put a couple out there to go after dangerous drivers,” said Schandelmeier, whose ward covers more of Forest Drive than any other.

Forest Drive has been a source of complaints since I moved to Annapolis in 1987, and has even played a role in local elections. It’s like Chesapeake Bay humidity in July. There’s nothing you can really do other than move.

Dropping the speed limit was one of the easiest, least-expensive steps identified in a 2023 safety study of Forest Drive after it tallied more than 500 crashes over five years.

A month before it was released, Schandelmeier and I walked part of the roadway together.

It felt risky, the kind of stroll you normally wouldn’t take unless you have no choice. If you live along this corridor, you know to wait a beat after the traffic signal claims that it’s OK to drive onto the road or walk across it.

Make sure oncoming drivers actually stop.

Things haven’t gotten any better in the three years since we took that walk. There have been more collisions.

Since January, police have reported 23 crashes, 11 with injuries and one death. Andrew Frye, 37, of Crownsville, was killed in June when his car collided with a pickup at Quiet Waters Place.

If the county follows through on its budget plan, big influxes of funds are scheduled to start in fiscal year 2029 and finish in 2031.

The money will pay for safer crosswalks and bus stops, smarter traffic signals and a strategy to make the scores of side streets, driveways and parking lot entrances less crash-prone.

County engineers have done preliminary work on these goals, mostly in design and planning.

“Capital projects like these require a lengthy pre-construction phase,” spokesperson Gabby Reed said. “This includes multi-stage design reviews, right-of-way land acquisition, and construction bidding, which spans from late 2024 through the spring of 2027.”

Even that probably won’t change all that much.

New developments already under construction will put more vehicles on the road, first from 500 homes for seniors near both Spa and Edgewood roads.

“To have any slowing down to a decent speed, you have to have a narrowing of the road,“ Schandelmeier said. ”Or you have to have a way to visually narrow it.”

Maybe it’s more trees or dedicated bike lanes. The changes Schandelmeier envisages happen over a decade or more.

Forest Drive is one place where Annapolis has room to grow. More housing, transit options and walkable commercial development that keep people out of their cars belong along its path.

West Street is another.

Getting there started with the 2040 comprehensive plan completed last year. It continues when the City Council takes up citywide rezoning, shaping the evolution of a 376-year-old city.

To Schandelmeier — the council’s biggest urban planning nerd — that includes transforming Forest Drive from an unplanned highway into a livable cityscape.

Others in public office have similar visions.

Alderman Rob Savidge, whose ward sits at the corridor’s southern end, is pushing for a trolley system, whether light rail or rapid buses. Mayor Jared Littmann sees improving the planning process as a key to success.

Former Mayor Gavin Buckley will probably be the next County Council member for greater Annapolis, representing residents on both sides of the city line. He spent eight years envisioning a more walkable, bikeable city.

Those who travel on Forest Drive daily may disagree that slowing down is a good idea. Political pressure was enough to kill a plan that would have established many of those goals in 2019.

So, when the speed limit drops from 40 to 35 on Monday, it’s OK to grumble. When you get that first $40 speeding citation somewhere down the road, take it with chagrin.

Consider it a ticket to a future Annapolis. Just be ready for a long, slow trip.

“You have to plan for the city you want,” Schandelmeier said.