Reconnecting with veterans of the Road Fight

How good it was to see the veterans of the Road Fight at the Creative Alliance Sunday, the saviors of the heart of Baltimore 40 years ago. There was a whole lot of hugging and handshaking in the lobby.

For those who are not familiar with the Road Fight, the City of Baltimore, tempted by $200 million in federal highway finance, announced in the early 1960s that it would build a highway and interchanges cutting right through the city. The highway would connect the Jones Falls Expressway, I-95 and I-70. Motorists would spin through a massive cloverleaf interchange right at the (then) dilapidated old harbor and speed away to points north, south and west.

The highway would have destroyed Fells Point, Federal Hill, Canton and the Inner Harbor. It did destroy several West Baltimore neighborhoods before a ragged coalition of ticked-off homeowners, Legal Aid attorneys and high-falutin historic preservationists finally got the highway cancelled. Anyone who wants to see the devastation the highway would have wrought can drive Mulberry Street west toward Irvington and Catonsville. Once you are in the concrete canyon, you’re on the highway our government intended to build.

If it hadn’t been for this gaggle of housewives, students, artists and all, there would be no Inner Harbor because the highway was designed to hover seven feet above the water there. There would be no downtown stadiums—two neighborhoods were cleared so the highway could cut through there. Fells Point and Federal Hill would be freeway interchanges. The actual Federal Hill would have been leveled for the freeway, and Baltimore, instead of developing a thriving tourist industry, would have been just another rest stop between Philadelphia and D.C.

It was one of those spectacularly stupid ideas that the government occasionally comes up with, and as usual it took a long time for the government to start listening to the people in the neighborhoods who know better. The road fight took a decade.

This brings us to another couple of spectacularly stupid ideas the government is pushing at the moment. West Baltimore neighborhoods that were spared the bulldozer 40 years ago could see them in the next few years if the Red Line moves forward. Tempted by a couple of billion in mass transit funds, the state Mass Transit Administration is in the planning stages of a trolley system from Woodlawn in the west to Highlandtown in the east that would connect subway, MARC and Light Rail stations. The route would go through Fells Point, Canton and Highlandtown on this side of town, and would go underground from downtown through Fells Point only. The Red Line route looks very much like the highway route did 40 years ago, and while it would not lay waste to as many homes as the highway would have, it will destroy many.

If you drive along Mulberry Street west one of these days and wind up in the concrete canyon, take a look at the bare earth on either side where neighborhoods once stood. That area, as close to downtown as it is, is one of the city’s most impoverished now.

Baltimore is a city built for buses. The MTA should concentrate on creating north-south and east-west routes through the city that people can actually figure out, and drop the Red Line.

Got any more nominees for spectacularly stupid government development plan? Send ‘em to editor@baltimoreguide.com.