“I think some older engineers reserved judgment until they could see if she’d pull her weight.”
ments to admire the bridge’s soaring height, which will leave ICC motorists seeing treetops while hikers and horseback riders traverse the wooded stream valley below. “When it’s done, you’ll be able to feel like you’re in the park without the road encroach- ing upon you,” she says. “It will be a beautiful bridge to look at.”
Several times each week, Peters and her team of state employees and consultants meet with the contractors. Out of 15 or so people at the table, there are typically one or two other women. Beverley K. Swaim-Staley, who became Maryland’s first fe-
male transportation secretary last year, says Peters’s success stems from her smarts and detailed command of the technical- ly challenging project. Even so, Swaim-Staley says, for women coming behind Peters, “I don’t think you can underestimate the importance of having a female engineer overseeing one of the most significant projects we’ve done in the state of Maryland.” Peters says she initially felt insecure about her age, won-
dering whether those working for her who had a decade or two more experience would take her seriously. But she says she never focuses on being a woman. “I don’t come into meetings and think, ‘I’m the only woman
at this table.’ I don’t see the world that way,” she says. “I think it’s important to treat everyone with respect and deal with them honestly. I assume people are treating me in the same way.” Her colleagues say they notice few differences between
Peters and male bosses beyond what one termed her “mater- nal thing,” such as baking birthday cakes and pies for her staff and organizing monthly potluck lunches. Robert Farley, a consultant who oversees construction on
the ICC’s eastern end, says Peters is the first woman he’s worked for in 25 years of building large projects around the country. “Initially, you see a project director 30-some years old, and
you’re surprised, and it’s somewhat unusual it’s a woman. But it doesn’t take very long until it’s like that doesn’t exist,” Far- ley says. “She’s just the project director. She definitely knows what she’s doing, and everyone looks to her for direction.” Even so, most of her colleagues — men and women —
acknowledge that it took Peters longer than a man to earn widespread respect. Her ideas are still sometimes chal- lenged more than a male boss’s would be, some say. She had to quickly prove that she knew the project inside and out in a way that a man in charge usually wouldn’t. “I think some older engineers reserved judgment until they
could see if she’d pull her weight,” says Betsy Weinkam, an An- napolis-based environmental consultant on the ICC. “Some of these guys just didn’t have to deal with women before.”
Peters’s ability to appease an often angry public — or at least to make people feel heard — is at the root of her suc- cess, colleagues say. At community meetings, she is polished and well-spoken, translating technical engineering plans
into plain English. On the phone in her office, Peters speaks with a Colesville res-
ident worried that traffic exiting the highway will make it nearly impossible to get out of his neighborhood without a stoplight. “I absolutely hear your concerns,” she says. “I’ve been out
there, and I’ve looked at the intersection.” She says she’ll put him in touch with traffic engineers who determined that the intersection doesn’t meet state requirements for a signal. The man likely would not get his stoplight, Peters says later, but he should understand why. Public officials representing neighborhoods that fought the
ICC say Peters has remained cordial and returns their e-mails promptly. State Sen. Jim Rosapepe (D-Prince George’s) marvels at how she responded to complaints about the highway slicing through the 14th hole of a Beltsville golf course. After seeing the problem — the developer had built part of the golf course in the state’s right-of-way — Peters returned with new designs that spared the hole. “No one likes a highway going through their golf course,” Rosapepe says, “but she basically solved the problem.” Not everyone is impressed. Patsy Koehler, president of
the Cross Creek Club Homeowners Association, says Peters and her staff never informed Koehler’s neighborhood of 657 homes that the ICC would have a partial interchange at near- by Briggs Chaney Road. She says Peters was “brusque and unaccommodating” when she told residents that the designs were too far along to make major changes. The community “had to fight for sound barriers.” Peters says that moving the highway farther from Cross
Creek would have put it too close to another neighborhood and affected more parkland, wetlands and a stream. Plans have noted ICC access at Briggs Chaney since 1997, Peters says. “The developer did have maps showing the ICC” ramps
nearby, Peters says. “How much he communicated that to people picking their [home] sites and buying their homes, I don’t know.”
The ICC’s first 7.2-mile section is scheduled to open by the end of the year. Whether that happens, Peters says, will de- pend on how much rain the area gets this summer and fall. The Georgia Avenue bridge over the ICC is long since paved.
Peters’s overnight detour proved unnecessary. The bridge opened several months behind schedule, she says, but once the rains let up, the paving went more quickly than anticipated. Still, other challenges await. The latest: finding light fix-
tures for a new tunnel that are strong enough to withstand the power-washing required to keep the tunnels clean. “We’ll solve the problem,” Peters says. “Every problem that
comes up has a solution. It’s just a matter of keeping everyone focused and working together.”
Katherine Shaver covers transportation and development for The Post. She can be reached at
shaverk@washpost.com.
july 18, 2010 | The WashingTon PosT Magazine 23
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