When It's a Parkway, the Trees Win

D r. Gridlock:

The Baltimore-Washington Parkway has been two lanes each way for over 40 years. There are no businesses on it, no homes, no nothing but exit and on-ramps and trees on both sides.

Why couldn't this roadway be widened to four lanes each way? It has become a major route to Baltimore but creeps along much of the time to 10 mph. All we would lose are a few trees on each side.

Erwin A. Siegel

Alexandria

The 29-mile-long BW Parkway is one of many roads in our region that handles traffic volumes planners never envisioned. Between the District line and Fort Meade, the parkway is under the control of the National Park Service. Note the middle name of that organization.

Tell those folks that all we would lose are a few trees.

The NPS portion of the parkway did get a major upgrade in a project that stretched out over more than a decade. One thing that didn't stretch was the width of the roadway. It's still four lanes.

But the northern part of the parkway is controlled by Maryland's State Highway Administration, also aptly named.