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

6
Research Design
Like many other states throughout the United States following World War II, Maryland
responded to the state’s inadequate roads by building a new highway system between 1948 and
1965. By 1940, the Maryland State Roads Commission (SRC) had completed the SRC’s original
charter of creating a highway system that connected each county seat with Baltimore. However,
driving to nearby towns without long detours could be difficult because of the lack of convenient
connecting roads. The state also experienced a rapid increase in vehicles on the Maryland’s
highways as more people purchased vehicles to drive from one place to another. During this
period, more Maryland citizens chose to move from cities and towns to suburban areas, which
increased traffic on unprepared roads. The state highways’ engineering and right-of-way
problems also made them unsafe. In some cases these issues stemmed from the highway
system’s nineteenth century origins. Maryland’s common border with the District of Columbia
also required that the state’s highways meet military preparedness requirements. In addition, the
SRC required a dedicated funding source in order to build new highways because of the rising
construction expenses.
Portions of Maryland’s highway system began as colonial trails that became nineteenth
century turnpikes, which the SRC in turn widened and paved as state highways between 1910
and 1940. Although the SRC had built some new highways, such as US 40 from Cecil County to
Garrett County by 1940, many of the State’s roads had limited improvement possibilities. From
1910 until 1940, the SRC repeatedly sought to address problems such as steep grades, sharp
curves and lines of sight, as well as costly right-of-way purchases on the older, narrow roads
throughout the state, but found making significant improvements difficult as traffic steadily
increased.
Citizens purchasing new vehicles resulted in more automobiles on the state’s roads. In
Maryland, the number of vehicles registered in 1941 was 494,141, by 1948, the number
increased to 569,082; in 1952 it increased again to 656,831 and by 1960 stood at 1,001,713.
During holiday periods the average daily traffic could more than double on some highways as
people drove through the state. 2 Although suburbanization outside the city limits was not a new
event by the post-World War II period, the large numbers of residential and commercial
developments that were built after 1947 were unprecedented in Maryland’s history. Roads that
previously had low traffic volumes suddenly began to experience urban traffic levels as
developers constructed new houses and shopping centers, and people began to use them.
2 Although there is no statistic to explain the traffic growth (e.g., car ownership doubled and therefore traffic also
doubled every five years) Maryland’s highways such as US 1 were frequently crowded during the holidays because
of people driving through to places outside the state’s borders. Other highways with heavy traffic counts included
US 50 near Ocean City especially during the summer. In the twenty-first century, I-95 and US 50 remain heavily
traveled during these same periods. See Public Roads, Vol. 23, No. 5 (July-August-September 1942) p. 101; U.S.
Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States 1950, Motor-Vehicle Registration, Washington,
DC: US Government Printing Office (1950), page 489; Highway Statistics 1948 State Motor-Vehicle Registrations
- 1948, Washington, DC: US Government Print Office (1950), page 26; Highway Statistics 1952 State Motor-
Vehicle Registrations - 1952, Washington, DC: US Government Print Office (1952), page 26; Highway Statistics
1960 State Motor-Vehicle Registrations - 1960, Washington, DC: US Government Print Office (1962), page 51