historic context of maryland highway bridges built between 1948 ...

SECTIONTHREEHistoric ContextExtension of a highway between Glen Burnie and the Potomac River Bridge (now I 97, US301, MD 3);US 50 between Washington and US 301;A new highway between Baltimore and Wilmington, Delaware, later called the John F.Kennedy Highway (now I 95) completed in 1963;The Baltimore-Harrisburg Expressway (I 83) completed in 1959;Improvements to US 15 in Frederick County and US 11 in Washington County;Improvements to the Frederick-Washington Expressway, also known as the WashingtonNational Pike, later renamed the Dwight D. Eisenhower Highway (now I 270).At the top of the SRC‘s list during the period of the Twelve-Year Program was the constructionof an expressway to link the new Chesapeake Bay Bridge to the newly completed DelawareMemorial Bridge to connect with the New Jersey Turnpike. This would provide an importantlink for long-haul vehicular traffic along the Atlantic seaboard and provide a bypass of congestedcities. The Twelve-Year Program also provided for reconstruction of 2,200 miles of secondaryand farm-to-market roads (Engineering News-Record, April 16, 1953:23; Engineering News-Record, November 20, 1952:27; State Roads Commission 1956:3-5; 1958:3-4).By 1960, the ―keystone‖ of travel through Maryland before the interstate system was completedwas a system of three bridges and a tunnel-expressway built by the SRC. Together the systemoffered travelers through the state two major options when traveling north to south acrossMaryland and relieved much of the traffic congestion on urban streets and rural roads. The firstoptional route crossed the Susquehanna River Bridge (US 40) and bypassed busy Baltimorethrough the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, connecting with US 301 on its way south to the PotomacRiver Bridge into Virginia. The second option was to travel from Delaware across the EasternShore on US 301, crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and continuing on US 301 to Virginia.Before the interstate system was completed in the late 1960s, these routes made Maryland aviable part of the national travel system on the East Coast.Much of the Maryland highway system modernized in the 1950s was ultimately absorbed intothe interstate highway system. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 established a partnershipwith highway departments of several states to construct the interstate system according to plansapproved by the Bureau of Public Roads. Maryland‘s SRC built approximately 354 miles ofinterstate highway (State Roads Commission 1960:4).In 1955, the General Assembly approved plans for Maryland‘s first toll-road. The proposed 48-mile toll road (I 95) would parallel US 40 between Baltimore and the Delaware state line and becompleted in time for the scheduled 1957 opening of the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel (now I 95/I895) (Engineering News-Record, April 14, 1955, page 24). The complex of controlled-access tollexpressways on the East Coast that had begun with the opening of the Pennsylvania Turnpike in1940, culminated in expressways in Delaware and Maryland by 1963. By that year, motoristscould travel from Maine south to Virginia, or west to Illinois, without stopping at a traffic light,except at Breezewood, Pennsylvania.By 1958, the SRC had to admit that they were lagging behind their goals for the first four yearsof their Twelve-Year Program but had completed 70% of the planned mileage (EngineeringNews-Record, March 20, 1958:25). In 1960, the SRC revised the Twelve-Year Program in\15-SEP-11\\ 4-15