Following the tragic collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in late March there has been a lot of talk about what a new bridge should look like, what it should be called, and who it should be for.
The thing that has also seemed to happen is that all of the other ways that a car might move from above to below the Potapsco River has become more congested, including downtown (though to a lesser extent than the tunnels).
For me, it hasn’t changed my commute much since I typically bike to work. But I’ve seen how it (now combined with Orioles game day traffic) has turned downtown into a parking lot during rush hour.
I recently had a conversation with a local artist who is currently working on a huge painting of the Inner Harbor. Part of the fledgling painting contains a depiction of the old Harborplace Pavilions, which are slated to be torn down and redeveloped over the next several years, so I joked, “better hurry and get this done before they tear the pavilions down.”
Though I’m a life-long Maryland resident, Baltimore is my adopted home. And though I take pride in what my city is and can be, I sometimes forget that there are people who have been here for much longer than me and have much warmer feelings toward these buildings that have become all-but abandoned in recent years. I think it is important to note that the above commentary was penned by the son of the man who originally built them. I should also say that I remember when they were a dazzling place full of wonder and Bubba Gump Shrimps, but it was essentially a shopping mall and the heyday of shopping malls in general have long-since passed.
Anyway…. the artist remarked on how sad it was that they were going to be tearing down the Pavilions and upon my sort of “meh” response quickly turned to what she thought would be a universally understood and agreed upon enemy: the traffic.
My brain started weighing different priorities and feelings. Luckily, before I could respond my wife bailed me out and agreed with her and we moved on. But if you know me, you know that I stayed mentally in that space for quite some time. She was definitely right that the proposed changes to Pratt St would condense the currently 5-lane one-way monstrosity downtown down to fewer vehicle lanes, adding better separated bike infrastructure, green space, and public transit space and traffic definitely would be affected by something like that.
As urbanists, sometimes our first reaction when someone says that reducing vehicle lanes will slow down traffic is, “Yeah, that’s the point.” But the reality is that we need both a carrot and a stick. Maybe sometimes multiple carrots and multiple sticks. The goal isn’t really to punish people who drive, but to influence driver behavior using road design. Providing new modes of transit will almost definitely encourage more people to use active and public modes instead of driving, but it only affects people whose destination is downtown or can’t be reached in some other way. In a recent interview of Baltimore youths, asking what sorts of improvements they hope to see in a redeveloped waterfront, one respondent noted that cheaper parking options would be key. In my mind, though, the real problem is that she thinks that driving is her only option.
That brings me to my point: it won’t be enough to just transform downtown. Obviously. We have a lot of work to do to make Baltimore easier to traverse either by bike or by bus or (eventually, hopefully) train. But as long as the only ways to drive from Pasadena to Towson on a highway involve a $3 toll in each direction, drivers are going to keep using Baltimore’s downtown as their highway to bypass the tolls.
Sometimes from tragedy comes opportunity. Officials have said they expect it to take four years for the Key Bridge to be rebuilt. MCB has said it will likely take a similar amount of time to transform the Inner Harbor. When the dust settles, we need to dissuade drivers from using downtown as a highway and redirect them to the actual highway. That means a toll for driving downtown, keeping cars away from what we hope will be a renewed gathering place for Baltimoreans; even if that means drivers over the new bridge don’t have to pay a toll. We should also be able to ensure people who can’t afford it will be exempted. If we care about people’s safety and making the Inner Harbor a beautiful place to congregate, we can cover the tab.