When it comes to the subject of another crossing of the Chesapeake Bay, few people in the General Assembly — and possibly not all that many in Maryland — want to hear what state Sens. E.J. Pipkin and James N. Mathias are saying. We're still glad they're saying it.

Pipkin, a Republican whose Eastern Shore district includes Queen Anne's County, is again pushing a bill to order a $25 million National Environmental Policy Act study on the potential impact of a new span across the bay. As the Easton Star-Democrat reported recently, he has the support of fellow Senate Finance Committee member Mathias, a Democrat from the lower Shore who used to be mayor of Ocean City.

The bill is a goner, of course. With the legislature currently preoccupied with how to close a $1.1 billion budget shortfall, the governor doesn't want to think about this, most legislators don't want to think about this, and the Maryland Transportation Authority most assuredly doesn't want to think about this.

"It's not part of the transportation authority's long-term plans to do a new crossing of the Bay Bridge," Dennis Simpson, the MdTA's director of capital planning, told the committee last week.

When Pipkin asked Simpson whether those who have to use the bridge should just resign themselves to sitting in traffic from now until kingdom come, the answer was: "There are many congested corridors throughout the state of Maryland we're not spending money on today, and that we probably will never be able to fix. And maybe this is one of them as well."

What a pity we can't have the late Gov. William Donald Schaefer back with us to respond to that gem. Although if that were possible, it would be advisable to remove all children from the room first.

Our view is that this area can't accommodate the traffic or the support roads for a third Bay Bridge span, and that any new crossing should be elsewhere. But whatever option the state decides on, it needs to get the ball rolling on a study of the environmental impact — under current rules, an incredibly long and involved process.

It's foolish to pretend that the current Bay Bridge can handle all the region's cross-bay traffic indefinitely. Or to think that leaving the Bay Bridge a traffic choke point will somehow contain growth on the Eastern Shore. Or to forget about the huge economic costs of congestion.

"Do it now" may not be a possibility. But acting as if the state will never need to do anything — ever — is irresponsible.