Reservoir / Druid Hill / Mondawmin: Turning the corner

The corridor from Reservoir Hill to Druid Hill Park to Mondawmin is at a critical stage right now. It has the city's best park, best shopping mall, best transit outside downtown and some of its most attractive housing, but the recently announced closure of the Target store has dealt a bitter blow.

As such, the area's most critical development zone is not where you'd expect: It's the two block "no man's land" at the elbow where these three areas should and could come together, but don't.

The old "gold coast" high rises of Reservoir Hill looking west along Druid Park Lake Drive should be extended to wrap slightly around the corner toward Mondawmin (three new buildings, upper right).
Druid Lake will be shrunk somewhat over the next five years to construct underground water tanks. 

This small point is exactly where the development growth spreading northward from downtown to  midtown to Bolton Hill to Reservoir Hill comes grinding to a halt. Then two blocks beyond, north of Fulton Avenue, activity picks up again toward Mondawmin. This small two block area could be called "Reserdawmin Hill". Or some better name.

Development of this small area would allow Reservoir Hill to wrap around and embrace Druid Hill Park in a way that's not now possible, and create some common ground with the greater Mondawmin community, turning the corner, integrating them and blurring their boundaries.

Reservoir Hill is the growing neighborhood between North Avenue (US 1, lower left) and Druid Lake.
 Greater Mondawmin (upper left) is the large neighborhood west of huge Druid Hill Park (upper right).
"Reserdawmin Hill" could be the tie that binds them.

Traffic is in the cause and the cure  

The northwestern of the two blocks is dominated by one of the city's most bizarre intersections -  between Druid Park Lake Drive, McCulloh Street, Druid Hill Avenue and Fulton Avenue (see Google Earth map below). It's an intersection that literally screams "stay away!" to any pedestrians who might happen to venture nearby. It's also confusing for motorists. But moreover, it's a huge waste of space that infects and deadens both the main corner of  Druid Hill Park to the north and the triangular piece of parkland to the west toward Auchentoroly Terrace, making it not feel like part of Druid Hill Park at all. Residents of the attractive victorian rowhouses along Auchentoroly make the best of this, but they must feel like they're living on the edge of the world instead of next to the best park in the city.

The other block, bounded by Druid Park Lake Drive, McCulloh Street, Cloverdale Road and Madison Avenue, is occupied by a small outpost of the city's Department of Recreation and Parks offices. That's a gross underutilization for a parcel at the primary gateway of Druid Hill Park. Rec and Parks no doubt uses it only because it's there.

A third slender block between these two is occupied by basketball courts, which seems to be an odd use and not very convenient to the nearby communities or the rest of the park. However, they are otherwise lacking in recreational facilities and it's not critical to new development.

Existing traffic lanes through "Reserdawmin Hill": Reservoir Hill is to the lower right. Mondawmin is to the left. Druid Hill Park is to the top. Rec and Parks office in the little house on the right block.
 Basketball courts on the lower block. Snarling intersection on the upper block.

The traffic flow at this sprawling intersection is grossly imbalanced. Southbound flow is actually very efficient, comprised of three traffic lanes. The right lane flows thru into Druid Hill Avenue, the left lane turns left into eastbound Druid Park Lake Drive, while the center lane has a choice of either direction (for drivers who aren't quite sure where they're going).

In contrast, northbound flow is a giant mess. It's seven lanes in all, with enough pavement for an eighth or even a ninth lane, both of which had to be hashed out because there's no room for those lanes to go. It's an orgy of asphalt. Five of the seven lanes merge into northbound McCulloh Street, which eventually changes names again to Auchentoroly or Swann or Swan. Madison Avenue becomes a different Swann in the park. An "Ugly Duckling" turning into a Swann? The street names are almost as confusing as the streets themselves.

Merging zones like this belong on Interstate highways, not city streets. The merges beg aggressive motorists to go faster and faster. But the merge point is at the exact location of the pedestrian crosswalk into the park, instilling a helpless feeling on anyone attempting to cross.

All this was in fact originally designed to resemble an Interstate highway, or at least to transition into one. Interstate 795, built in the 1980s from the Beltway outward toward Owings Mills, was originally (in the 1950s) supposed to proceed inward into the city along what later became the Wabash Avenue corridor, then proceed further to the Park Circle area, and then into this web of traffic lanes here along the edge of Druid Hill Park.

The two remaining lanes of the seven are directed to turn left into Fulton Avenue. This is OK, but the lanes take up a lot of space because they are segregated from the rest of the traffic, which also means motorists are screwed if they don't get in the proper lane two blocks in advance near Madison Avenue.

Proposed "Reserdawmin Hill" plan. Southbound traffic flow would stay as-is,
 but northbound flow would be greatly consolidated as shown.

The solution is to just design two normal intersections, one at Fulton and the other at the end Druid Park Lake Drive. The southbound traffic patterns won't change at all. For the northbound traffic, the high speed merge would be eliminated and all the traffic would be consolidated into three lanes on each approach, with an additional lane or two between the two intersections for left turns into Fulton. This layout would free-up a significant amount of land where the high speed merge lanes are currently located on Druid Park Lake Drive (see graphic above).

The exact number of lanes should be determined by further study of the larger area traffic patterns all the way north along Druid Hill Park, to greatly reduce the park's isolation from the Mondawmin community. Along the park, all the through traffic in both directions should be concentrated in the five lanes now used for northbound flow, thus enabling the elimination of through traffic on the street immediately adjacent to the houses on Auchentoroly Terrace (see article from Baltimore Brew). 

This is very do-able, and would be a major relief to the neighborhood and a major enhancement to Druid Hill Park. Relief is needed even for the two blocks of Auchentoroly just north of Fulton where most through traffic is shifted away from the houses, because the remaining thru traffic goes too fast, as evidenced by the "speed humps" that had to be installed - a stopgap band-aid kind of solution.

Northernmost hi-rise is the key to the plan. It would actually feel like it is part of the Mondawmin community (upper right), Druid Hill Park (bottom) and Reservoir Hill (left) at the same time. Also of note is the distinctive architecture of the city utility building just across the street from the proposed high rise. It was originally a streetcar storage facility. The nine-lane highway north of this intersection should also be narrowed at some point.

The "Reserdawmin Hill" plan

The goal of the plan is to bring Mondawmin, Reservoir Hill and Druid Hill Park together for the benefit of all. In terms of cold economics, the goal is to strengthen the primary local market area for retail in Mondawmin Mall (like the Target property) and for the neighborhoods as a whole.

The freed-up space adjacent to the park by downsizing the intersection south of Fulton should be used for high density residential development. This is one of the best places in all of north Baltimore for high rise housing because it would not directly impact anyone, but it would also infuse new life into the park and eliminate the "no man's land" between Reservoir Hill and Mondawmin. The nearby neighborhoods are dominated by thousands of rowhouses, so modern attractive high rises would be a welcome new market choice. These new buildings would also complement and relate to the adjacent historic high rise buildings just to the south along Druid Lake in Reservoir Hill (see top graphic).

There are probably legal issues to be addressed in this plan, but the sheer amount of park land should not be an issue. Druid Hill Park is huge and much of the park land does not even function as park land. More and better park land would be created by downsizing the highways that wrap around the park. And most of all, even more new park land is about to be created by burying much of Druid Lake for the safety of its drinking water. 

The real issue is not the gross amount of park land. It's maximizing the quality and usefulness of that land for real people, especially the land at the park's edges which most serve the surrounding neighborhoods.

Good sites for attractive high density housing are hard to find. This is a great one because it is on the cusp of two very ambitious and promising neighborhoods, along with the city's premiere park. Baltimore needs to get away from its waterfront development tunnel vision. Housing which is a true catalyst for the whole city's growth and which can return much more in the future should be a high priority.

There's going to be a big construction mess in this corner of Druid Hill Park for the next five years to build the new underground water tanks. Let's make it worth it.

Raising zillions for Northeast Corridor transportation

Governor Hogan recently announced a $9 Billion proposal to widen three major Maryland expressways using future toll revenue from "express toll lanes". This merely hints at the vast potential of highway tolls to raise prodigious amounts of money to build transportation projects. In this case, it is promised to be entirely at the risk of the private sector from design to construction to operation.

While this concept is only applied here to suburban highway widening, it really has much greater potential for financing a far wider range of transportation modes and projects in a much larger multi-state area - the entire Northeast U.S. Corridor.

Interstate 95 construction about a decade ago to create four "express toll" lanes,
 just northeast of the Baltimore Beltway (I-695)

The scope of the Hogan plan should be greatly expanded to become a public-private authority, all the way from Washington to New York or beyond, encompassing all major transportation facilities including highways, freight and passenger railroads and even future high-speed high-tech maglev or hyperloop. Narrow thinking focused only on specific widening for "express toll lanes" to reduce congestion subverts the entire concept.

The basic "express toll lane" dilemma

The Maryland proposal is a way to address the specific growing highway congestion in the growing Washington, DC suburbs, while using the congestion to create the revenue source - so-called "congestion pricing". Tolls would be charged on designated "express toll lanes" and would rise as demand and congestion rises, being higher in peak than non-peak periods. Rising tolls would be a demand management tool to prevent the overuse of the toll lanes, much as hotels and airlines commonly charge higher rates for peak periods. Adjacent lanes would remain free. All motorists would benefit because the toll lanes would siphon traffic off of the free lanes, and those with flexible schedules would benefit even more from travelling at off-peak times.

But the basic problem of this concept is the same as its advantage - it feeds on congestion. Without congestion, it won't work. And the more congestion there is, the better it works. Congestion itself also reduces traffic capacity. So saying its goal is to reduce congestion is highly deceptive.

This is further confused by the fact that it's a highway building and widening scheme, and it touts expanding highways as a way to reduce congestion. So the very act of expanding highways works against the concept of "congestion pricing".

Moreover, widening specific highway segments creates capacity mismatches. The benefit ends where the highway widening ends. Bottlenecks merely move to these locations, thus nullifying the benefits.

These problems have been well illustrated in the billion dollar project to reconstruct seven miles of Interstate 95 several years ago from near the east Baltimore City line to White Marsh (MD 43) in order to provide four new "express toll lanes". Expansion of the highway from 8 to 12 lanes has indeed reduced congestion for everyone. As a result, there has been scant incentive to use the toll lanes, and they have only attracted an average volume of about 25,000 vehicles per day. This is an extremely low volume for a billion dollar project, more akin to what is carried by an urban arterial street. This entire segment of I-95 carries over 180,000 vehicles per day.

What's more, the "express lanes" must merge back into the old highway at each end. At the southwest end in Baltimore, this means going through the two tunnels under the harbor, neither of which is likely to be widened or expanded in anyone's lifetime despite constant traffic growth. (Right now, the city is attempting get funding to build new ramps into Port Covington which would allocate more of the I-95 capacity to new local traffic at the expense of through traffic.)

At the other end northeast of White Marsh, the problem is even more imminent. The two northeastbound express lanes themselves neck down to a single lane prior to merging back into old I-95. The entire northeastbound capacity goes from six lanes on the new express section, to four and then three lanes to the north. This creates a major bottleneck where congestion will continue to get worse, largely nullifying the whole benefit of the billion dollar project. Even many drivers who would enjoy the benefits of the express toll lanes avoid them because of the risk of getting trapped behind a slow poke when merging back at the end. They'd rather have the flexibility and freedom to weave around in the four free lanes.

The only "solution" to these problems is to sacrifice the free lanes, and make them work even worse, so that the toll lanes can attract an optimum level of traffic to maximize revenue.

In the Washington suburbs, the variable electronic toll InterCounty Connector (MD 200) was built as an "outer beltway" to solve the congestion problem on the old inner beltway (I-495), but of course it didn't. Now the inner beltway is one of the highways in the state's $9 billion package of three highways to be expanded for express toll lanes. It's the same old futile story of trying to widen our way out of traffic congestion.

The real solution begins by thinking bigger about EZ Pass

The real solution has been on the horizon for a few years but has yet to see a breakthrough to a wide application: ALL major urban and interurban highways should be subject to congestion toll pricing, not just a few selected express lanes.

Collecting tolls through the EZ Pass and other electronic systems is now commonplace. It needs to move toward becoming universal. That is the only way that effective management of traffic demand can happen amid the highway system's many capacity constraints and bottlenecks. Highways should cost more to use in peak than off-peak periods, in order to regulate demand and eliminate congestion.

Uncongested highways could be free at off-peaks, including bridges and tunnels that now have a uniform toll 24 hours a day. Current gas taxes could even be rolled over into this system to further increase the incentive to use uncongested roads. The currently common political stalemate over raising gas taxes relates to the mistrust that this money is not truly a "user fee". This will allow motorists to have greater control over how much they pay for what they get. It could also make the currently contentious concept of a "carbon tax" more politically palatable.

Some enlightened experts have even proposed including auto insurance in the deal, so people could pay as they drive instead of getting an uncorrelated lump sum monthly or annual bill. All this would give motorists the maximum incentive to take control of their driving expenses (a nonstop version of Progressive Flo's "name your own price" tool).

All this could be done in phases, of course. In Maryland, it would begin by making all bridge and tunnel tolls variable based on peak demand. This could start off as "revenue neutral". The bridges and tunnels could be free in the middle of the night and cost more in rush hours.

Tolls for the I-95/895 harbor tunnels in Baltimore and the I-95 Susquehanna River bridge to the northeast, where congestion is a major problem, could be "bundled" with the existing express toll lanes in between to encourage more than the current 25,000 cars per day to use them.

Then instead of Hogan's plan to build new lanes for express toll traffic at a cost of billions, existing lanes could be converted to variable express toll lanes where congestion is already a problem. This could start simply with the conversion of one of the two "tubes" in each direction of the I-95 Fort McHenry Tunnel to variable tolls.

Thinking bigger means thinking multi-modal

Of course, no congestion reduction plan can get far enough without getting a significant number of people out of their cars altogether. The solution strategy raised above therefore needs to incorporate multi-modalism - transit for people and freight rail for truck traffic.

Here the rule is simple: Spend money on transportation projects which will do the most good. New express toll lanes may fit a paradigm where tolls pay for the highway construction, but do they actually solve the problems? As discussed above, the answer is usually "no".

Thus we need to expand our horizons to where the revenue from highway tolls can be spent on high speed rail, freight rail and/or whatever is most beneficial. Expanding our horizons also means considering the entire highly urban and interrelated Northeast U.S. Corridor from Washington D.C. to New York or perhaps from Virginia to Boston or whatever works best. It also means involving the private sector, which should have the expertise and entrepreneurial discipline to make it work.

Defining boundaries and parameters in a logical, efficient, focused and non-arbitrary way is critical. Amtrak's dense Northeast Corridor service now competes for federal subsidies with sparse service in the great plains and mountain states, and very arguably comes out on the losing end. President Obama made a big deal of his "high speed rail" investment stimulus program, but spread the money out thinly to include any state that showed sufficient interest. President Trump has made highly publicized gestures to the private sector, but nothing yet that looks substantial.

There is a massive amount of money at stake in all this. Amtrak alone has plans for well over a hundred billion dollars worth of projects in the Northeast Corridor. Maglev and Hyperloop high speed rail projects are in a similar astronomical cost neighborhood, and really aren't redundant with Amtrak. Then there's countless major highway projects and various freight improvements and maintenance costs for all of it.

The biggest current rail project in the Northeast Corridor is a proposed new tunnel under the Hudson River from New Jersey to Manhattan, and its status has been tenuous. The project was originally led by the State of New Jersey and there was much contention and finger pointing when they decided it was too big for them. But it was revived by Amtrak and the Federal Railroad Administration with the various New York and New Jersey agencies in subordinate roles, and it hopefully now has enough momentum to actually happen.

Meanwhile, here in Maryland, Governor Hogan has gotten flack for his highly publicized interest in the private sector's maglev and hyperloop high speed rail proposals between Baltimore and Washington. And very recently, CSX Transportation pulled out of a deal with the State of Maryland and a hypothetical federal government partner to expand its railroad tunnel through downtown Baltimore to accommodate "double stack" freight trains, dealing a blow to the city, state and regional freight and port interests.

The common denominator is money.

NECTA: Northeast Corridor Transportation Authority

The transportation needs of the Northeast Corridor from Washington to New York and beyond are bigger than any and all current entities can handle, even the United States government. The current complex interactive web of institutions at the federal, state, regional, municipal, and private sector levels lack the formal relationships and financial leverage to make it work.

The ultimate solution is the creation of a Northeast Corridor Transportation Authority that incorporates all the major highways and railroads in the entire multi-state region. This would include Amtrak and the various commuter railroad lines that run on the same tracks - including MARC, SEPTA, NJT, etc. NECTA would have the power to establish and regulate tolls on all its highways and set fares on all the rail lines. It would also contract with the private sector on various projects.

NECTA would also be the right kind of institution to implement the kind of "express toll" highway plan that could really reduce congestion, expand true effective daily traffic capacity, and give people control over their transportation expenses - and finance mobility solutions that would really work.