As the Frederick Douglass Tunnel comes into view, questions over what should happen to the Highway to Nowhere

It’s a new year and time to consider new paths Baltimore could take over the next decade.

The West Baltimore MARC rail station, at the western end of the Franklin-Mulberry corridor, the so-called Highway to Nowhere, is one such starting place.

There’s now money to replace the 151-year former Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel under West Baltimore, which has been renamed in honor of Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist who escaped from slavery in Maryland.

As construction moves forward (no completion predictions here) the rail tracks will be realigned and the current West Baltimore station will be replaced with something more permanent. The current station did its job, but is little more than a wooden deck.

But what this station has is golden: acres and acres of free parking for commuters making the trip to Washington and its suburbs or on to eastern Baltimore County and Perryville.

When the station opened in 1984 to replace one at Edmondson Avenue, it was not used so much. In time, it found a purpose and now its parking lots are filled.

Baltimore has a potent financial ally in Washington and its well-paying jobs. The cost of living is lower in Baltimore, and many commute by rail.

A few bits of history: The existing tunnel runs near the old Frederick Douglass High School (1925) at Calhoun and Baker streets. The heart of Baltimore’s historically Black community once had a station on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The old tunnel opened in June 1873 and took a little more than two years to hand dig. The Sun reported that 500 men labored daily in construction crews. A trio of steam-powered pumps worked continuously to draw out the spring water that inundated the excavation. The tunnel was used by steam locomotives and produced plenty of foul air. The solution was the two, 60-foot-high chimneys that ventilated the underground cavity.

Nearly 130 trains, both MARC and Amtrak, use the tunnel daily. Only the state-run commuter trains call at West Baltimore.

The tunnel did its job until May 1924, when a city water main broke in Bolton Hill. It took all summer to repair and the tunnel has experienced periodic cave-ins ever since.

The planned replacement tunnel’s construction comes as the city deliberates what to do about the blunder it made 50 years ago — the displacement of thousands of families for the depressed highway (once called I-170 and now Route 40) that runs from Fremont Avenue to Smallwood Street.

“Every 30 years the federal government requires an interstate highway to be rebuilt and in the case of Baltimore, the bridges that span the highway as well,” said Baltimore City Planning director Chris Ryer. “Rochester, New York, had an old depressed highway and that city did a study. They found it was cheaper to fill in the highway than replace all the bridges.”

Ryer envisions eliminating the huge concrete pit that ends at the West Baltimore MARC Station. It would be a mighty project, to fill in blocks and blocks and thus restore the links between the communities of Harlem Park, Lafayette, Franklin and Union squares.

He also notes that the long discussed Red Line transportation link could be routed this way as either heavy rail, light rail or dedicated bus lanes.

“We could reconnect communities by taking out that highway,” said Ryer. “We could build a traditional boulevard and with the extra land build affordable housing, retail or whatever. We have the opportunity. The city and state own all that land.”

Ryer then dreamed aloud and thought expansively.

“There could be a new city built, like a Reston [a 1964 new town in Northern Virginia] near the MARC West Baltimore Station. We have the opportunity now,” he said.

So, as two huge projects — the construction of an all new Frederick Douglass Tunnel and the eventual fate of the Franklin-Mulberry corridor — come into focus, Ryer wants to consider the big possibilities.