Baltimore's Top Transit Missed Opportunities
Baltimore Sun map from 1930s The Streetcar Subway: In the 1920s Baltimore floated the idea of burying its streetcar lines under downtown with a loop underneath Fayette and Baltimore Street. Streetcar lines along Pennsylvania Ave, St. Paul Street, and Gay Street would have funneled into tunnels at North Ave with lines from the west going into a tunnel under Baltimore Street, from the east under Eastern Ave along Patterson Park and through Fells Point, from the south under Hanover street through Federal Hill. This would have created a very extensive subway system in central Baltimore, and would have in all likelihood, like Boston, SF, and Philadelphia saved much of the streetcar network. If this scenario had played out, places like Penn Station, Patterson Park, and the northeast would have been a quick underground trolley ride away from downtown. Metro Subway to BWI: The original plan for the for the Baltimore metro called for a spoke-and-wheel system very much like t...