Portal:Maryland roads/Selected article/July 2012

The Baltimore–Washington Parkway is a highway in the U.S. state of Maryland, running southwest from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. The road begins at an interchange with U.S. Route 50 and Maryland Route 201 near Cheverly at the D.C. border, and continues northeast as a parkway maintained by the National Park Service (NPS) to Maryland Route 175 near Fort Meade. This portion of the parkway has the hidden Maryland Route 295 designation. After leaving park service boundaries the highway is maintained by the state and signed with the MD 295 designation. Upon entering Baltimore, the Baltimore Department of Transportation takes over maintenance of the road and it continues north to an interchange with I-95. Here, MD 295 continues north unsigned on Russell Street into downtown Baltimore, where it follows Paca Street northbound and Greene Street southbound to an intersection with U.S. Route 40. Plans for a parkway linking Baltimore and Washington date back to Pierre Charles L'Enfant's original layout for Washington D.C. in the 18th century but did not fully develop until the 1920s. In the mid-1940s, plans for the design of the parkway were finalized and construction began in 1947 for the state-maintained portion and in 1950 for the NPS-maintained segment. The entire parkway opened to traffic in stages between 1950 and 1954. Following the completion of the B–W Parkway, suburban growth took place in both Washington and Baltimore. In the 1960s and the 1970s, there were plans to make it a part of Interstate 295 and possibly I-95; however, they never came through. Between the 1980s and the 2000s, the NPS portion of the road was modernized. (more...)

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