Revisiting Old Freeway Attempts Part I: The I-95 Connections

If you take a look at maps of Baltimore and surrounding areas, you will see a plethora of Freeway plans that never came to fruition. The reasons why are endless, the three biggest were; Neighborhood protests, lack of funding, and environmental concerns. Another reason was that in some cases, building freeways in that particular area or region was flat out a bad idea. Some of these un-built freeways were good ideas and as such, I wonder if somehow several billion dollars magically appeared if revisiting these old Freeways would be a good idea. I will examine all freeway attempts even the outlandishly bad ones.

During the era that Eisenhower signed the Interstate System into law, cities across the Country were literally being torn apart to make way for these new Freeways. It was thought that people would ditch cities in favor of suburbs and cities would be nothing more than slums and a Central Business District. In a lot of cases this is exactly what happened and some blame the intrusive freeways for speeding up the process. Baltimore actually got off light with its freeways but the original plans were much and grandiose.

First there was I-70. Ever notice how weird it was that it just abruptly stops at the Park & Ride lot at the City/County line just east of I-695? Well, it wasn't supposed to. I-70 was supposed to continue on into the City plowing through Leakin Park at the cost of Baltimore's largest and greenest park, have an exit onto Hilton Parkway, have a spur that leads directly into Downtown (more about that later) where it finally ends at a seemingly more appropriate location at I-95 between Caton Avenue and Washington Boulevard. Ghost ramps along I-95 tell this story. City Residents put up a fight to save Leakin Park before this segment of I-70 was built and were successful in saving Leakin Park.

Now should we revisit this and try again to extend I-70 to meet I-95? Absolutely not. As far as the environmental concerns go, nothing has changed. In fact, the addition of the Gywnn's Falls Trail has only added to the notion that Leakin Park is not to be disturbed. 

Next we come to I-170 aka the Road to Nowhere. Highway Planners were so sure that funding would be secured for the I-70 extension to I-95 and that the Community at large would support it that they began building the spur to Downtown known as I-170. Since I-70 wouldn't hit Downtown itself, planners decided to build a small three mile spur that would connect I-70 to Downtown. Roughly one mile and a half miles of the spur was constructed at the expense of hundreds of Residents between Franklin and Mulberry St. before the plan to connect I-70 to I-95 was canceled. The result was and is a broken Community that has yet to recover from this invasive freeway project. Planners tried to make it worth something by connecting I-170 to I-95 without the I-70 connection. This would be known as I-595. This also didn't pass and I-170 became the Road to Nowhere.

Again the question comes, should we try to revive this? Again the answer is no. Like I had before, the Citizens of Baltimore don't want to have Leakin Park destroyed and in order to connect the I-170 spur, more homes in West Baltimore would have be destroyed further ruining the Community. It should also be noted that City Planners want to dismantle the portion of "freeway" that was already built to build a mixed use TOD Community in its place to spur the revitalization of West Baltimore.

Another Freeway that was supposed to connect to I-95 was I-83 aka the JFX. The reason it didn't continue as a freeway past Fayette St. was because of Community backlash, just like the extension of I-70 that never came to fruition. I-83 was supposed to remain a freeway going into what is now Inner Harbor East through Fells Point and finally along Boston St. in Canton. it would connect to I-95 near the O'Donnell St./Boston St. Interchange as evidenced by Ghost Ramps. Back then, Inner Harbor East was nothing more than parking lots and industrial ruins and Fells Point and Canton had gone into decline. One big reason for their turn around was the idea that the I-83 extension would destroy their historic Row Homes and take the fabric of the Neighborhood with it a la the Road to Nowhere. 

Should we revive this attempt? Fortunately that would be impossible. Gievn how much redevelopment has gone on in the area, building a Freeway in the middle of it would erode all the progress that was made in Southeast Baltimore and turn it into the Road to Nowhere Corridor. If that's not reason enough to not revive the I-83 extension I don't know what is. I should also mention that there are currently plans to turn I-83 from Fayette St. to Preston St. into an at-grade Boulevard in an effort to connect Downtown to East Baltimore and spur more redevelopment. It seems that Baltimore wants to reduce its Freeways rather than add to them.

That's about it for the I-95 connections. This will be a three part series due to the wealth of abandoned Freeway ideas the Baltimore area has. Stay tuned.