I don’t hate it.

I honestly don't understand mid-century USA's fascination with putting highways on water front property.

I mean, I get it. Often those were unsightly docks, warehouses, and filled with unsafe people. Also it was easy to rip out city cores since white folks were fleeing to the 'burbs.

But still... Waterfront

Ah yes the 50s, where destroying anything for a highway was a good idea.

Praise the Lord this never happened.

I think Light & Pratt are hardly better…

That's a strange building with the highway off-ramp onto it's roof. What a terrible vision overall- thankfully the people resisted and save Fed Hill and the Inner Harbor from becoming asphalt wasteland- you want to envision what this would have looked like, go stand under the 395 overpass at the Stadium parking lots.

So many American cities ruined their waterfronts with highways.

This would have been worse than the inner harbor we have now but I still think Light, Pratt, and Key Highway are all too wide and take up too much prime real estate that should be used more productively.

One of my favorite stories about Baltimore is about a lady named Ann Doda. She lived in Locust Point and led the fight for five years to change the original plan of an I-95 bridge that would cut through Locust Point and over Fort McHenry. Thanks to her, Locust Point was saved and we have a tunnel system instead. There’s a memorial to her and her husband in Latrobe Park.

And they ripped out all of the neighborhood trees because birds were shitting on their cars 🤦🏻‍♂️

And covered up hardwood floors with nasty carpet 🤦🏻‍♂️

Or Tom Ward, the only city councilman to vote against it

You raised some good reasons why this was done, but another factor I’d add to that is that it didn’t usually tear neighborhoods in half. Yes, it’s awful to ruin great waterfront property, but it’s also a lot better to place a highway between some houses and the water than to place it directly through a neighborhood and rip it up. Not every transit engineer was evil back then, and sometimes this genuinely was one of few options that was relatively non-impactful to a community. I don’t know if that’s what happened in Baltimore specifically with this drawing, but it was definitely a factor in other places.

But I think it’s also important to keep in mind cars were seen as the future and public transit was earning a really bad rep. It’s true General Motors bought a lot of streetcar companies - but that’s because many of them were going bankrupt. Even NYC’s subway companies were be acquired by the city because they weren’t sustaining themselves (among other reasons). Nobody wanted to ride in a streetcar, they were loud, cramped and frequently obstructed. Buses were cheaper and flexible, requiring zero infrastructure beyond some menial placards and a bunch to set up an entirely new route. And to be frank, streetcars still don’t make much sense as replacements for buses even in 2022. So if that’s where you’re at in the 50s, it makes sense to imagine highways going everywhere and why that’ll be an improvement

A waterway is essentially an existing right-of-way. It’s simple enough to just view the Jones Falls and think “oh, we don’t even have to tear anything down and it connects exactly where we need”

Also remember that the 50s highway planning ethos was about defense (both in alignment and design) and the suburbs.

It makes sense. The highway system was designed around military use.

Mid-century cities were getting designed for people who didn't live in them. Basically due to a complicated mix of mid-century housing policy, banking loans and a whole ton of of racism, cites got thought of and designed as places suburbanites would commute into for work and leave right after. It's how we get atrocities like Kansas City.

Well, you have the “American dream” and racism to thank for that. Personal cars were obtainable to the masses and the creation of suburban sprawl communities.

You are correct, interstates didn't tear neighborhoods in half. The city interstates just outright deleted neighborhoods. Even in this rendering you can see Fed Hill and Little Italy are erased. And if this picture shows the bridge for originally planned i-95 route, then Fells Point and Canton are also fully deleted. The designing engineer might not be racist or look down upon working class, but the local politicians creating the parameters for the engineer definitely were.

Also this particular i-95 possibility was impactful enough to launch the political career of Senator Mikulski. She made her first big play as community organizer fighting this particular design. Though she saved those neighborhoods, much of i-95s route east of Baltimore deleted other neighborhood's.

Because cities were built for easy access for the whites that dipped out into the suburbs using cars from the mid to the end of the 20th century. They weren’t built for the residents or anything else.

Oh yeah, this particular highway might have totally destroyed neighborhoods in this instance. My answer was more of just a general take on why highways at that time were sometimes aligned on the water. I am very, very glad it did not get built lol. The damage the "highway to nowhere" caused the west side is a great example of why highways are so harmful. I wish the city had built out its metro network like DC did, who knows where we'd be today

It saddened me when I learned that there was originally supposed a second north-south subway line in Baltimore. Transit funding drying up and Anne Arundel County racists (shocked Pikachu) helped to kill that line though.

Looks like it’s a top access parking garage that has a ramp down to lower levels. And then I would assume to get out is a street level exit. Curious what that building was supposed to be to get literally it’s own highway exit

Oh it’s painful to read what AA county residents said about what would happen if public transit were completed. I mean just straight up blatant racism.

Wait I’m confused. Fed hill is still clearly there and still a park. Ya you lose the volleyball courts to that weird building with its own highway exit and you lose the unobstructed view of the harbor to the highway, but you gain that small park where the ritz Carlton is now. And from what I can tell this rendering doesn’t show what becomes of the little Italy

That, and the water front parking lots. Nothing exemplifies high-value waterfront like parked cars.

Is this the highway plan that was going to decimate fort McHenry? Thankfully we protect our historic sites now

Thanks Babs!!

When people refer to Fed Hill generally they mean the neighborhood, not the park. Assuming the highway doesn't turn dramatically as soon as it gets off the rendering it would definitely go through Little Italy, and would also cut off almost the entire northern third of Fed Hill.

You know what would look nice on this brick? Some stucco.

Thank god those DC-looking monstrosities - those mid-rises parallel to the harbor - didn't get built

Also, the water ways of America in that era, before the clean water act, WERE TERRIBLE. You would never want to be on near that water. There was an outrageous amount of pollution being dumped into water ways.

It's amazing how much cleaner the air and water has gotten from WWII till now.

I was about to comment the same sentiment, but to answer your question... You also need to think of this in the context of convenience and arrogance from the point of view of the high-modernist, technocratic planner of the mid-20th century. By that point, there was so much pollution and degradation of the natural elements of our cities' waterways, that many US cities thought the easiest and most efficient way to get value out of them was to do with what they had and felt was the cool, new thing: the automobile. With deindustrialization slowing rotting away - literally and figuratively - at the core of our waterfront infrastructure, a lot of these docks and wharfs were just vacant real estate. It can be easy and efficient to build something that costs a lot, like highways and automobile infrastructure, on land that is "vacant" instead of occupied. (Not that they didn't do that though! See, the Highway to Nowhere.

EDIT:

Provided some helpful links for further reading if anyone is interested.

Wow, missed opportunity with all that parking! We now know how much cars LOVE to go swimming and take strolls along the waterfront promenade!

A ton of parking lots and a waterfront highway? Really?

The parking lots would be developed by now and the park space would probably be something like millennium park

I mean look at millennium park in Chicago now. It was nothing but parking lots and every city that did this then has a better waterfront then us now.

On the other hand, I kind of wish they could have come up with a bridge alternative that would have avoided Ft. McHenry, but still gave the city some benefits beyond transportation. Bridges are such an iconic piece of culture and architecture for a city and we honestly miss out on that A LOT. Look at examples like Pittsburgh and the Brooklyn Bridge in NYC and Chicago and San Fran and how their bridges really define their cities and how people associate the image of the city with the bridge and vice versa.

Apparently, there was another bridge crossing planned for I-895 which would have been very similar to the Francis Scott Key Bridge: https://www.dcroads.net/crossings/harbor-tunnel/img18.gif

Otterbein was demolished then and they rebuilt it in its current form once the highway was cancelled. Same with that community off the square in canton

No parking there now…

Yeahhh…..👎

Exactly, but from 1950 till the early 00 there was, like most cities

Obviously the most important thing to have in the 1950s was a cafeteria that just served food encased in jello molds. That’s what I’m going to assume this was ;-)

Like I hate this…..but I also want a copy for my wall. So conflicted.

So glad this got shot down! As much as the inner harbor of today could use some work, it's sooooo much better than what they proposed here

I wonder if at some point it might make sense to try to put in a big dig style underground connector. Like rip out 83 at and past Penn Station and have it go underground from there to meet 95 where 395 is. Then MLK, President, Pratt, Light, and Russel, and Howard could all be complete street'd into way less car volume.

I imagine it would have interchanges at Camden Yards, 40 / UMD, and State Center.

Like it would be stupidly expensive, but there is definitely a lot of through traffic that ends up on downtown city streets.

Honestly, a ring subway would probably be way better. Put in a heavy rail loop on a similar alignment with stations for like... South Bmore, Statiums, UMD, State Center, and Penn Station. And still rip out 83 past the station cuz its just dumb. They could build up park and ride infrastructure at 395 and the end of 83 and just let people metro around instead. If it has a transfer track at state center it can use existing train yards, so the only real expense (and yeah, it is pricy) is tunnel boring, station construction, and buying the trains. But MTA is already getting new trains anyway, so like... missed opportunity. People could use the light rail to go around downtown or the subway to bypass it. As it is, people don't use the light rail cuz its gets so freaking slow downtown.

We don't need a road for defense, we can just let invading landers collapse crumbling bridges into the harbor where the toxic water will melt them through in seconds.

big swooping concrete highways are pretty, in a mid-century-brutalist sort of way.

At the time of this plan. Baltimore still had its streetcar system. My parents lived in the city at this time, they both worked. My dad used the streetcar and my mom used the car since she worked in the county. Multiple cars serving one family didn’t hit until the mid to late ‘60’s. It’s my understanding that the Inner Harbor was a dark and desolate place for the most part. McCormick Spice (Light St.)and The NewsAmerican (across from Pratt St. Pavilion) brought many employees from the blue collar neighborhoods throughout the city. Banks, Insurance companies and other home offices lined N. Charles, Calvert and Lombard Streets. Residents still shopped at Lexington Market, The Fish Market and did shopping for clothing and household goods downtown. All this was reached by streetcar.

I mean it would have been terrible, but I do like the waterfront park.

I think Little Italy would have been just fine. Pretty sure Tommy DeAlesandro (Mayor) during that period lived in Little Italy. Nancy Pelosi’s father, her brother also served as Mayor in the 60’s. The area was rock solid. It was one of the few neighborhoods that didn’t have so much as a broken window during the riots which destroyed much of the city.

Da fuq only one type of tree that's so stinky

For context: The archivist (Absolutely amazing guy) said that this plan would have required large parts of Mt. Vernon to be torn down. The reasoning was that a highway from and to the port terminals would help Baltimore remain competitive economically with other large cities. I also believe that a Senator won a ballot off of opposing this plan and getting it struck down.

All underground

Is it possible to scan this for digital archives?

Unfortunately the archivist said they don’t really allow people to do that anymore, but maybe I’m wrong. They may already have a digitized version online, but try calling and asking!👌🏾

Thank God they didn't do this

Chicago does not have a better waterfront than Baltimore. Chicago is usually the city that's an example of how to f up a waterfront, they put a highway between the city and the shore making it much harder to access. Imagine it there was a highway to nowhere size road between downtown/fells/fed and the harbor, that's Chicago.

That’s your subjective opinion. It would be a highway to 95/895/295

Great find! Did my best to restore it in Photoshop: https://imgur.com/a/xfejWmu

Gave it a go in Photoshop from OP's photo: https://imgur.com/a/xfejWmu

Uh, guessing you've never been to Chicago if you think Millennium Park is waterfront? It's about as close to the lake as any of the hotels on Light Street are to the harbor, for the exact same reasons.

Didn’t say it was waterfront.

>Also remember that the 50s highway planning ethos was about defense (both in alignment and design) and the suburbs.

^This. You could easily line the bridge with gun emplacements or artillery and fuck up anything coming up the Chesapeake.

If that's supposed to be 95, my guess is the ramp leads to some kind of arena or stadium? But if that's an extension of 83 / President St. there's no telling what kind of Atlas restaurant it might be

Awesome, more highways that would cut the city off from the harbor and further divide the city making it even more inaccessable to anyone that doesnt have a car or want to drive. Thats great for someone who only wants to get in and out of the city as fast as possible, but as someone that lives and drives in the city, I'd much rather have access to the waterfront than an easier way in and out

This looks fantastic! Thank you so much for cleaning it up!

So soviet looking. 🤔

There’s clearly access to the waterfront

Good ole waterfront parking lots

That's an important perspective to consider, I didn't even think about that.

People also don’t use the light rail because it’s nowhere near extensive enough. cries in red lines

I’d love to see more rail. Sincerely, East Bmore

I disagree, the lake and waterfront are probably one of Chicago’s best features. And that’s coming from someone who used to live right next to lake shore drive. Sure lake shore drive is annoyingly close to the lake, but there’s so much between it and the lake that makes up for it. I love Baltimore and came here because I like it so much more than Chicago - but it’s hard to compare Baltimore’s waterfront to one that’s almost 20 miles long, has multiple beaches where you can swim, several parks, bird sanctuaries, and a great biking path that connects it all together.

The Big Dig was derided by so many people, cost so much and had so many cost overruns, and was about highways as opposed to mass transit - but look at the results. Neighborhoods connected, waterfront property exposed, tons of new parkland, land value way higher. The costs seem to be easily justified in hindsight. In Baltimore, one could envision the effects - get rid of lots of round-the-harbor traffic, shrink Pratt and Lombard and President and Light, make the whole area pedestrian friendly.

I think the plan was you jumped out of your self driving car onto the roof and Inner Harbor.

Edit

Ewwwwww

Is that why there’s barely any shade around the harbor? Damn.

That's my guess is that it was going to be the Arena- this would have been about the time the current Arena was in planning probably. I didn't look it up but from seeing other old maps, that was going to be 83 connecting to 95 I think.

lol West Baltimore too. The light rail is out of the way for me and doesn't really take me to any destinations I need to go. I'd love a line that could take me east...

This might be naive, but 83 should be ripped out all the way up to Norther Parkway. Or at the very least converted to have bus lanes, at most one or two lanes, and remove the connections by Druid Hill Park. I'd also love it if it went under North instead of over, then the whole thing can be covered for anyone who wants to drive downtown.

If the light rail had more reach I'd even say turn one of the further stops up into a park and ride so cars don't need to go downtown.

The lesson learned is there will always be cost overruns for any major infrastructure project, but they took money out of the budget for public transit to fund it. Boston's train and metro lines are falling apart because they used their budget for the Big Dig.

What a monstrosity that would have destroyed fed hill and fells point

The only problem I have with cutting 83 further north, which would normally be a great idea and long term I'd def agree to cut it out to Northern Parkway, is that the light rail doesn't go direct to Penn Station from the north. Like if we want to cut the highways we need to actually offer an alternative that won't piss people off feeling like a huge downgrade.

That being said yea, they totally should put in an infill park and ride at Northern Parkway for the light rail. If you are coming down 83 from PA there are park and ride signs for the light rail in Timonium, but from the Beltway you really don't have a good spot to do it at.

Long term the goal for transit development in Baltimore should be to build out light and heavy rail to the major burbs at the city border (if the red line is built to Catonsville, then Parkville is the only really big one I see needing a dedicated right of way rail connection) and build up the city core with proper metro so commuters feel fine park and riding in from near the beltway. But that has to start and build out center-out, meaning we need things like the red line making inner city connections that are woefully needed, and replacing MLK and 83 with complete streets and working transit.

Maybe I worded my comment poorly, I agree Chicago has nicer parks and cooler places to check out like shed aquarium or navy pier along the waterfront. What I was talking about is the fact there's a highway that divides all that from the city making it harder to easily access

You're absolutely right, and I think moving the JFX back would be a piecemeal process. For example by getting rid of some of these really ugly interchanges like at Druid Hill Park.

I do think though if budget is an issue taking away a lane on some of these two lane one ways for a bus is the quickest way to get people to start taking them, then they could be upgraded to light rail. The problem with buses now is the frequency and the number of stops. if they were some expresses that would take you across town it would make it much more reasonable to use. Even the light rail I feel suffers from this issue.

Well, the dumbest thing about the Big Dig was the basic idea--what if we take an ill-advised urban interstate and fix it by putting it underground?

Baltimore's been lucky not to have highways routed all the way through the city, and while it would be great to have Pratt/Lombard/etc. narrowed, any infrastructural work remotely on the scale of the Big Dig should be about reducing vehicular traffic as much as anything else.

Number of stops is a much smaller problem than :gestures broadly:. Buses in most cities stop every couple of blocks (most of the locals in Manhattan are standardized at every other block, IIRC).

Reckon we need more buses and traffic prioritization first and foremost, but also ffs more streamlined fare payment pls. Make the cash fare $2 and spread out any future increases to stick to (at least) quarters, and I suppose ideally look toward contactless payment for the future.

Chicago's also just got a very different relationship with Lake Michigan because of the lack of other bodies of water around. What would the actual point be of a beach at the harbor?

Yes, and actually when I am in Manhattan I don't use the bus for similar reasons unless it's the unique case of trying to get across town if I'm not in the LES. Traffic prioritization is certainly a key, as is the frequency of buses here. I don't recall the headways for NYC MTA buses but I'm certain it's faster than the 15 minutes+ it can be around here.

The problem with 83 for busses isn't needing a dedicated lane, its the backups getting off the highway. Giving them a bus only lane on the highway doesn't do anything to fix that.

I am annoyed on the bus subject how much MD is trying to push electric busses when what we really need is that the colored line busses (and well, all the busses in general) having better than fucking 40 minute headways. I live on the purple line, they just cut the route from John Hopkins which really messed with me because it used to stop throughout downtown and at Shot Tower and now it skips half the city,

We need some express busses for arterials, particularly on rts 40 and 1. And we need way, way more frequent service on every line - 4-8 minute headways for colored lines, and 15 minute headways for numbered lines. People don't take the bus that could to get cars off the road because you can't get anywhere with a direct connection (and if you can, the bus stops 30 times and takes twice as long as driving anyway) and if you have to transfer you are stuck waiting somewhere for upwards of 20-30 minutes, and then half the time your transfer bus never even shows up.

I wish I could take the bus to doctors appointments, its like the perfect use case for busses, but I can't because I have to assume the bus will never show, get stuck in traffic, or that I'll miss the transfer. And even if it goes perfectly, most places I go regularly take 15-20 minutes by car and 40-120 minutes by bus. Make driving suck, and make taking transit not, and more people will take transit over driving, and then the city can build denser and waste less space on parking and roads for cars that drive people away.

Like, I am the person that hates driving and wants to use transit, but if I'm choosing between hopping in the car I park outside my townhouse with plenty of permit free street parking, have almost no traffic cuz the roads are so massive all the way out to some suburb sprawl mall with football fields worth of free parking in half the time it would take to bus anywhere, or possibly getting marooned somewhere with groceries when a bus just never shows or is 30 minutes out from when I'm done shopping, the system pushes you so hugely towards driving the planet killer.

Top it all off with most downtown jobs providing parking garages, so its not like you have to worry about parking for work, so of course you are going to drive there.

The charm pass works fine, just flash the driver the little screen animation thing, my problem with it is the fare structure sucks in that if you take a bus somewhere and back you are just stuck doing a full day pass no matter what. The $2 passes should be for like 4 hours of transit so that most trips are included in that pass rather than the like 15 or 30 minutes it currently is.

I'm not sure any transit system works like that--usually transfers are for a limited time window and can't be used on the same route specifically to avoid people using them for round trips. IMO as far as overall fare things to adopt, I wish more American cities would do like London where if you pay per ride up to the level of a particular day/week pass, it just converts you to that.

But as for paying fare itself, I more mean that our MTA welcomes too much delay at the farebox. A $1.90 fare absolutely encourages people to turn out their pockets to make exact change, and refilling CharmCards on the bus was slow and error-prone (but also necessary bc we don't have much other transit). It's just such a stupid self-own not to prioritize getting passengers to board/deboard as quickly as possible.

Right on my friend, I do agree with a lot of your points - specifically headways and managing transfers. But that's why I think by reducing lanes, changing bus routes so that they don't get backed up by car traffic, and the real key you mentioned of reducing headways it would make it much more feasible. There are plenty of times I give up and take my car because I don't have to spend 2x-3x as much time taking the bus when I could do it in my car.

As for the parking garages, this is one of the few times I'd advocate jacking up prices - granted as long as it's easy to get into the city, to dissuade people from coming in. Hell the city could charge a flat tax on people parking which goes back into reinvestment.

WOW!!!! I’ve got a framed drawing just like this I Inherited from my Grandfather in the 90s. He was an architect. He wouldn’t have been responsible for the plans above, but he may have been part of it, which would explain why he had a similar drawing. Well, it’s actually more of a sketch.

ANYWAY

You can see his work in multiple various areas of Baltimore, but most notably his contribution to the building of the Towson Library. Which he forced my Mother to promise him, that she would never take us kids into…. because the construction company installed the support beams upside down and by the time anyone noticed, it was too late to start over again.

He was convinced it would eventually collapse, yet there it still stands. Decades and decades later.

This is super cool thanks so much for sharing and triggering some old memories for me!!

Eliminating fares is definitely a huge benefit to specifically bus systems because it makes stops way more efficient. But I get the antagonistic relationship between MDoT and Bmore means that the state will never just give the city free busses.

One idea I've been floating is that the city should give residents 3, 5, or 7 free day charm passes a month. I'd want them to just load them on the app but way too many people don't have phones or cell service (something else the city could do, municipal cell service and a phone recycling program to give people that need phones phones) but in the meantime they could just load them on the app for residents that have phones and anyone else can get the pass in the mail. Maybe give out 7 days paper and 8 on the app to try to promote its use a bit, but still give everyone at least a week of free transit.

DC is floating the same kind of policy with $100 a month allowance per city resident in Metro, and this would be a lot less per person, but I think it would still get more people using transit and might get more pressure to improve it if people in Fells and Fed Hill were on it more often.

I guess I just don’t see lake shore drive as a giant barrier, it’s got tons of points to go over and under it for pedestrians and cars. Especially outside the loop. But I can see your point if you’re just referring to millennium park and the loop.

Even if there was an ocean or other bodies of water near Chicago, I doubt most people would pass up the convenience of being able to just walk or ride a bike to a nearby beach.

But I agree the relationship to Lake Michigan is nothing like ours to the harbor, I just think that’s mostly because it’s a cleaner body of fresh water and much larger portion of the city has easier access to it compared to here.

Baltimore is so far away from a city in which people can rely on mass transit to do much of anything, though. DC is barely there as its stations are generally too spread out. Baltimore has two unconnected lines that hardly run close to anyone in the city or anywhere they’d want to get to - and a bus system. I like mass transit, don’t get me wrong, but Baltimore needs so much more of it just to be barely functional for even a small percentage of its residents. Whereas an 83-95 link that doesn’t go aboveground around the harbor seems immediately useful to me and I suspect a lot of other people - and could perhaps be what Inner Harbor needs to make it livable.

Uhh, well, the Big Dig remains a poor frame of reference. There's no direct link between 83 and 95, and all of the multiple options are surface level and tied into the traffic grid. If you wanted to bury MLK, you'd still need to make provision for at least some of the crossing routes, which would really undermine the area's utility as a park.

And, subterranean infrastructure costs so much that if we're ever able to swing it again, it'd be a waste to use it on cars rather than to build even a little bit more of a subway network. We need people to drive less no matter what else happens.

I hear you. I find all those wide streets in Inner Harbor/Downtown pretty soul sucking. If only they were half as wide and tree-lined, places where people might actually want to walk. I think a lot of it is people making their way in a car around the Harbor, for me it was often Hampden or Roland Park or Fells Point to Federal Hill. Lombard and Pratt and Fayette and Light and President just get packed with those sorts of cars. A subway wouldn’t even cross my mind in those sorts of situations… for it to there would need to be a lot of new infra built.

The road width's not good, but I'd say the bigger problem especially with Lombard is that it's so barren on the sidewalk. I'd guess more than half of the street-level property on Lombard between President and Light is either some form of parking or an inactive side of a commercial property. Two-way the road to slow down traffic or put 10' of sod and some trees to take away a lane in front of each sidewalk and it's still bleak.

All that said, I don't have any ideas for how to make the harbor a more functional neighborhood or welcome pedestrian experience, but I think any efforts to redirect rather than reduce vehicle throughput should be treated with great skepticism.

I drove through downtown today (yes, boo me, the bus would have taken 3x as long :( with a 20 min transfer) and Pratt seemed pretty crowded.

Getting me off the road there would have required a transit connection from Union Square to Franklin Square that took a similar amount of time to driving on 40. I get that the citys transit probably can't beat i95 just because its so conveniently located (at cost - i95 cut the south and east off entirely, and that highway was monstrously expensive).

I don't really see that happening any time soon, they would need express busses on route 40 or something similar (I know Portland OR actually took away whole downtown streets to transit only and that really helped) but its already only a 2 lane for most of its length and people already ignore bus only lanes in the city because there is no traffic enforcement so I don't know how well that would help.

I think we really need a ring metro from the Boston St Red Line station to Federal Hill that hits Patterson, John Hopkins Hospital & University, Hampden, Druid Hill Park, the West Baltimore MARC Station, something in SOWEBO, like near Union Square, a station at the stadiums, and that end in Fed Hill. So much of what I'm doing is going between those parts of town anyway.

Of course, that is all tunneling and underground station construction, so it would require the state to give a shit about the city its been underfunding for a century, so good luck with that.

Funny thing is I'm in Hampden and near John Hopkins all the time but geniuses put the light rail under an interstate next to nothing. The only reasonable time I'd take it would be to go to Penn Station, but transit apps have me take a bus 90% of the time because the light rail is so infrequent its never there.