The town of Ocean City announced Friday it won’t be going forward with a proposed gas promotion.

The town made an announcement on June 3 it was gearing up for a $100,000 free gas promotion, making it the first resort town in the country to do so. The announcement was listed on Ocean City’s website, although it has since been removed.

“After reflection, the council established that gas giveaway promotions in place throughout the local business community are effective and a town-sponsored giveaway would only be of benefit to a small number of visitors,” according to a statement from the town.

Ocean City Mayor Rick Meehan said in a statement that the proposed promotion was reconsidered by the city council and many of Ocean City’s free events should be focused in promotional efforts instead.

But that’s not to say visitors can’t get gas card offers through businesses in Ocean City. (Put away your pitchfork and spare Rodney the Lifeguard!) Many incentives are listed on the town’s website, and by checking the “Rodney’s Roadside Assistance” box.

As for those free events (because we all love free things), you can still find them listed here.

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Now that the weather’s nicer and traffic is just lousy around downtown already, commuting to work by bicycle is looking like a better option these days.

Waterfront Partnership and Bike Maryland are teaming up to host a workshop June 30 on the basics of bicycle commuting. Interested bicyclists will learn on how to get started on biking, staying safe on those dangerous roads, choosing the right equipment, routes and what to do in inclement weather.

All attendees will be entered to win a TREK 700 hybrid bike. The event, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., will be free, but attendees must register.

Check out Waterfront Partnership‘s site for more details and registration.

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In response to my blog about a town in Germany selling potholes to citizens who pay to have them filled in, a reader has reminded me that this idea is not new — in fact, it was done in Baltimore before, during the administration of former Mayor William Donald Schaefer.

“Schaefer famously sold pothole repairs when he was Mayor. The repairs could be dedicated to a loved one, a red heart was painted over the patch and a certificate issued. A number of them are still visible around Baltimore. We have one on our block that we’re planning to ‘restore’ as a tribute to our great Mayor.”

As a former member of Mayor Schaefer’s staff during the ’70s, I should have remembered that getting potholes filled was one of his priorities — part of his detail-oriented, “do it now” approach to governance that won over voters — and involving the citizens of Baltimore was one of his greatest achievements.

I stand corrected.

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Now that winter seems to be loosening its icy grip on Baltimore, potholes are blossoming on local streets, and officials are combing through their scarce budgets to find the money to pay to fill them.

But one town in Germany has come up with an interesting idea: Selling potholes. Niederzimmern, a hamlet in the eastern German state of Thuringia, will repair a pothole and attach an individual’s name to the newly filled hole. The cost for owning a pothole? Only $68.

Niederzimmern Mayor Christoph Schmidt-Rose said there’s interest from the local populace in the plan. “The point is to use a funny idea to find people who can then help us to get our streets back in order,” the mayor told German radio on Wednesday.

While an unfilled pothole begs for attention, one that’s filled is saying, “Someone cares about me.” And, as Mayor Schmidt-Rose observes, people who pay to fill a pothole “feel like they own [it].”

Some years ago, Baltimore officials got people to buy bricks inscribed with their name or the name of a loved one for placement along the Inner Harbor waterfront promenade. That idea proved to be very popular.

So who’s up for owning a personal, inscribed pothole?

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For a company called ExecuCar, it’s probably safe to say there’s nowhere to go but up.

That’s because the company, which bills itself as the “premier luxury sedan service in the U.S.,” offering airport transfers and business travel with professional drivers, announced its foray into the Baltimore market Tuesday. Baltimore was one of five markets ExecuCar added, bringing its total to 19 (and 30 airports).

Of course, many of the roads in Greater Baltimore are not suitable for motor vehicles of any kind, let alone luxury sedans, thanks to last weekend’s record snowfall — and more snow is on the way. Also, BWI Airport was still grappling with the snowy deluge. Both of its main runways were back open Tuesday morning, but airlines had started sending word of flight cancellations later in the day and on into Wednesday.

“We had a multiple city launch set up at the same time so we had to pull the trigger,” says Ken Testani, senior vice president of global marketing for SuperShuttle International, which operates ExecuCar. “Hopefully folks will start using us, when weather permits.”

So this week is a soft launch of sorts for Phoenix, Ariz.-based ExecuCar. The company, which also launched service in Washington, D.C., Minneapolis-St. Paul, Pittsburgh, and Raleigh-Durham, N.C., is offering a $5 discount on reservations made online.

Unfortunately, no snow shoveling is included in that discount.

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As of this morning’s commute I am officially a field tester of the Maryland Transit Administration’s new Charm Card.

The Charm Card is a rechargeable plastic fare card, just like the Washington Metro’s SmarTrip card. Instead of buying paper passes daily,weekly or monthly you can add money to the card as needed — with the option to load it with weekly or monthly passes as well.

So, I plunked $20 into the vending machine this morning — paying with credit card is apparently forthcoming, but not available yet. And, on the first time out, everything went as expected, with no problems.

I can’t say I was really expecting there to be any problems; it’s not like using rechargeable fare cards is a novel idea.  The SmarTrip card launched in May 1999, and more than a million cards have been issued.

But the MTA is not taking chances. After a two-month field test on the subway system, it’s on to a test of the Light Rail and buses. That means it won’t launch systemwide until some point next year.

I’ll provide updates periodically of how the experiment is faring.

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Today, the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore launched its new site that’s intended to help commuters figure out how they can get to Harbor East without a car, or at least show them alternatives. The site, entitled “A Smarter Way to Get There,” has some cool-looking features, though I’m not having great success in using it right yet. Over time, it will probably get easier as they refine it.

Basically, here’s how it works: the site is oriented around a map with 11 icons below it, for the various Maryland Transit Administration lines and the Baltimore’s pending Charm City Circulator. You can click one of the options and see what resources are available around Harbor East. For example, click on the bicycle and it will show you public bike racks around the area. (And fun facts. Did you know that you burn 85 calories in a ten minute bike ride?) But it’s hard to look at other parts of the city where commuters might stop or be coming from. I’m sure that wouldn’t be too hard to fix.

Overall, it’s an interesting idea, because the Harbor East area, with its relatively narrow, two-way streets, is not going to wind up being a place where everybody can drive their own car to work. As Robbie Whelan and I wrote last year, many of the intersections in that area are projected to become inadequate if the growth continues apace. Using the existing public transportation could be helpful, but everyone seems to acknowledge that it’s going to be hard to accommodate growth down there without the Red Line, an east-west light rail link that’s years away.

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U.S. Customs and Border Protection says it intercepted a Chinese shipment that contained Asian Longhorned Beetles bound for Baltimore. If you don’t know what these are, pray you don’t find out. These bad boys are seen as a pretty big threat to trees everywhere, and they’re not supposed to be here.

Typically, they get into the States in wooden packing materials, so that’s why the authorities were on the lookout. I can’t find any documentation that these things have actually shown their horrific faces in Maryland yet, but the Nature Conservancy says we’re ripe for the picking. And you thought the gypsy moths were bad…

So far, the worst infestations since the mid-1990s have been in Chicago and New York. There was one in Massachusetts too. The only way to get rid of these ugly fellas is to destroy the trees they’re living in. Apparently, CBP caught another beetle-infested shipment from China in 2005.

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