"What an astounding thing that one person’s knowledge, interest and energy could have such an impact on all of us who today call Fell's Point home... One passionate soul really can make a difference!!" Kathleen Haller, Fells Point resident, commenting on Bob Eney’s passing in 2016 (originally posted at Next...
Saving Leakin Park
The advocates that successfully thwarted the City’s plan to build I-170 through Leakin Park gathered on November 11, 2021 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of Volunteers Opposing the Leakin Park Expressway (V.O.L.P.E). Those pictured are: Iris Reeves (x-Councilmember and wife of x-Councilmember Norman Reeves, one of the...
The Highway to Nowhere, Explained but Inexplicable
It was a cliffhanger. The City was facing a federal deadline to get I-170 under construction before July 1, 1973, but they could not start construction until the Federal Court ruled on the lawsuit brought by the Movement Against Destruction (MAD). Bill Hellmann and David Wagner would later serve as...
The Pratt Street Route
Some may wonder - the schematic plan shown on this page (with the expressway following Pratt Street and crossing the Inner Harbor piers) - who was responsible for that monstrosity? This was Planning Director Phil Darling's 1960 plan. Here is a short excerpt from the book: "To the critics of...
Julian “Jack” Lapides and the Robert Long House
As the author of this forth-coming book on Baltimore’s Road Wars, I would like to offer a tribute to Julian "Jack" Lapides, who passed away last week. Jacques Kelly’s fine Baltimore Sun obituary was a great remembrance of one of the most highly principled elected officials of our time. Kelly...
Baltimore on center stage, illustrating transportation inequities
There were no press conferences... no photo ops... nothing on the six o'clock news, but, make no mistake, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx was in Baltimore to make a point. Foxx's target audience for this 2016 workshop was not the electorate or even the local stakeholders; rather, the audience was Foxx's...
Tom Ward, bulldog for the highway opposition in the 1960s
"The Concrete Society"—this is a vintage 1965 WMAR-TV documentary about Baltimore's highway controversies. Tom Ward, the only City Councilman opposed to the expressway at the time, is extensively featured.You could make a good argument that Ward's Road Wars resume is unequaled, even deeper and more consequential than that of Senator...
Art Cohen and “The Road Building Blues”
Art Cohen then (1969) and now (2019). At right, Art Cohen, the Movement Against Destruction's (MAD) second president, holding up a 45 of his self-penned song, the Baltimore Road-building Blues. He performed the song at several hearings, as well as at the Baltimore Board of Estimates. Where other anti-highway activists...
The demise of Baltimore’s streetcar system
Baltimore's streetcar system was dismantled by National City Lines (NCL) in the period of 1948-1965. NCL, a holding company formed by General Motors, Firestone Tire and Rubber, Standard Oil of California, and Phillips Petroleum, acquired or controlled 46 transit systems for, as one author put it, “the express purpose of...