Approaching Downtown on I-97

THE LOST HIGHWAY

There is an Interstate Highway approaching Baltimore from the south that hardly anyone uses because it has hardly any ramps that anyone can use. South of the Beltway, it is called I-97. Where it connects to the Harbor Tunnel Thruway, it is called I-895. But in between as shown here, it has no known route number.

This is a view of the City that few people who live in the City can see - and makes Baltimore look extremely green. The leafy looking neighborhood just in front of the skyline is none other than Cherry Hill. In front of that to the left of the highway are Reedbird Park, Southwest Park and the Patapsco River valley. To the right is Brooklyn Park, though you can't see it through the trees.

There is no better way to improve Baltimore's image than to get traffic off of ticky-tacky arterials like Ritchie Highway and onto this clean and green parkway.



From this approach, the Downtown skyline looks like an aura. Too bad you can't actually use this highway to get there, or to 90% of the rest of the City for that matter. It would be relatively simple to build ramps from this highway to Potee Street for easy access to Brooklyn, Cherry Hill, Port Covington and Downtown.

Building expressways is painful and expensive. Since this expressway was built nearly fifty years ago, isn't it about time Baltimoreans actually had a chance to use it?