TOMORROW'S ROADS TODAY - Maryland State Highway ...

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cities and towns. By 1947, Governor William Preston Lane, Jr. and the General Assembly were
willing to approve increases to the gas tax, car registration and highway user fees, as well as
issuing $100,000,000 in highway construction bonds between 1948 and 1952 in order to finance
new road and bridge construction. 7 The financing scheme, which also included the fifty percent
federal match, enabled the SRC to start construction of Maryland’s expressway system. 8
However, the two new highways, MD 295 and US 50, and the new Chesapeake Bay Bridge that
were completed by 1952 were not sufficient to keep up with statewide traffic growth, nor was it
the complete system envisioned by the SRC.
The SRC’s second highway construction program, known as the Twelve-Year Program,
was created to construct new and improve existing highways between 1954 and 1965 throughout
Maryland. The program required additional increases in the state’s gas tax of one-cent, car
registration and highway user fees and new bonds for highways on new locations. Additional
financial support came from the Federal Government in 1956 following the passage of the
National System of Interstate and Defense Highways program, thereby funding ninety percent of
highway construction projects. 9 The SRC continued to design new highways, and in 1959 the
construction program became the “Go Roads” program, promising to finish 100 miles of
highway construction or reconstruction every year until 1965.
Between 1948 and 1965, the SRC constructed more than a dozen highways on new
locations and improved more than fifty others, including building more than 557 bridges,
ensuring Maryland’s drivers had an adequate and safe road system. In order to complete the
projects, the SRC incorporated its standards for design and construction and repeatedly used
certain types of bridges to reduce design and construction times. By using these standards and
timesaving methods, the SRC produced a highway system that met accepted national standards
that was similar to many highway systems in other states. The SRC understood that traffic
would increase annually and that the roads would need to be widened. Within ten years of
completing construction of some highways, the SRC returned to widen the roads to six lanes due
to increased traffic. For example, the typical four-lane highways that were built between 1948
and 1965 have been replaced by six-lane roads with concrete medians and paved shoulders, and
noise walls to reduce the sound of traffic in nearby neighborhoods. 10 The bridge decks have also
been widened and no longer retain their mid-century concrete parapets with one or two strands of
Alcoa aluminum or Bethlehem steel railings.
In addition to incorporating accepted design standards, each new highway had sufficient
right-of-way limits to accommodate future traffic volumes, growing suburban developments and
the need for military preparedness. The planned expansion of the highway system continued
7 Herbert R. O’Conor was Maryland’s Governor from 1939 to 1946, while William Preston Lane, Jr. served as
Governor from 1947 to 1951.
8 The terms “expressway” and “freeway” are used by the SRC engineers to describe the type of highways they were
designing and constructing in the post-War period. In Maryland the terms were synonymous and meant that the
highways were initially four-lane roads, divided by a median with access by private property owners adjacent to the
road and other drivers restricted to above-grade interchanges. The highways had a design speed of 70 m.p.h.,
although actual speed was restricted to 65 m.p.h.
9 In 2010, the federal funding limit is 80% while the state’s share is 20%.
10 The SRC widened both I-495 (Capital Beltway) and I-695 (Baltimore Beltway) within ten years of completing
each road because of increased traffic.