Baltimore-Washington Parkway
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The Baltimore-Washington Parkway is a freeway in the U.S. state of Maryland, running southwest from Baltimore to Washington. Slightly over half of the road, from the District of Columbia line (at New York Avenue) north to just south of Maryland Route 175 at Fort Meade, is owned and maintained by the National Park Service, which bans trucks from its section. Most of the rest of the road, north to the Baltimore city line, is maintained by the Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA); the northernmost 1.5 miles (2.5 km) are maintained by the city of Baltimore.
The Parkway runs parallel to Interstate 95 and U.S. Route 1 (the Baltimore-Washington Boulevard). The southernmost 0.20 miles (0.32 km) is part of U.S. Route 50 (and allows trucks). Northward, the parkway enters Greenbelt Park and enters National Park Service jurisdiction. At this point, the parkway has no route designation, and signs along this section use the Park Service standard of brown sign with Clarendon font (as opposed to the NHTSA-standard green sign with FHWA Series fonts). For reference, SHA designates the route Maryland Route 295. North of MD 175, the route comes under SHA jurisdiction and is officially designated Route 295; the route also continues north from the end of the Parkway at Interstate 95 in Baltimore to U.S. Route 40 and Maryland Route 129.
Signs at the boundaries of Greenbelt Park (where the parkway enters National Park Service jurisdiction) dedicate it to Gladys Noon Spellman. At the south end, it connects to U.S. Route 50 (New York Avenue), with access just north of the District line to D.C. Route 295 via Maryland Route 201. DC 295 continues southwest as Interstate 295 to end at the Capital Beltway just east of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, forming a continuous freeway from south of Washington to Baltimore.
Construction on the highway was begun in 1947 and it was opened to traffic in 1952 (the Federally controlled section was opened two years later), making it the first limited-access highway in Maryland.
The Parkway provides a significant commuter route within the Baltimore-Washington region. Two major users of the B-W Parkway are the National Security Agency and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, both of which have their own exits off of the Parkway specifically for their respective employees only.
In Baltimore, 295 is known as Russell Street as it runs west of Oriole Park at Camden Yards and M&T Bank Stadium. North of the stadiums, northbound traffic follows Paca Street, and southbound traffic follows Greene Street.
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[edit] Trivia
- The route bisects Greenbelt Park, whose land was obtained through the same acquisition as that of the parkway.
- As on other federally maintained roads, signs are brown rather than the standard green and use serifs on their text, except at the I-95/I-495 (Capital Beltway) interchange.
- In 1989, an overpass being built at Maryland Route 198 over the B-W Parkway just east of Laurel, Maryland, collapsed during rush hour, injuring 14 motorists and construction workers. The incident was blamed on faulty scaffolding used to support the uncompleted span.
- When the NSA was moved to Fort George G. Meade in the 1950s (to protect against a nuclear detonation in downtown Washington), existing roads were inadequate to handle the traffic from a then Washington-based workforce. The B-W Parkway was built primarily to service the agency, which is why the Federal Government, and not the State of Maryland, built the Parkway to a point just beyond the NSA exit.[citation needed]
[edit] Exit list
[edit] See also
- Capital Beltway
- Interstate 95 in Maryland
- Maryland Route 201
- George Washington Parkway
- Highways along the BosWash corridor
