Portal:U.S. roads/Selected article/December 2011

The Baltimore–Washington Parkway (also referred to as the B–W Parkway) is a highway in Maryland, running southwest from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. The road begins at an interchange with U.S. Route 50 (US 50) and Maryland Route 201 (MD 201) near Cheverly in Prince George's County at the D.C. border, and continues northeast as a parkway maintained by the National Park Service (NPS) to MD 175 near Fort Meade, serving many federal institutions. This portion of the parkway is dedicated to Gladys Noon Spellman, a representative of Maryland's 5th congressional district, and has the hidden MD 295 designation. Commercial vehicles, including trucks, are prohibited within this stretch. After leaving park service boundaries the highway is maintained by the state and signed with the MD 295 designation. Upon entering Baltimore, the Baltimore Department of Transportation takes over maintenance of the road and it continues north to an interchange with I-95. Here, the Baltimore–Washington Parkway ends and MD 295 continues north unsigned on Russell Street before following Paca Street northbound and Greene Street southbound to US 40 in downtown Baltimore.

Plans for a parkway linking Baltimore and Washington date back to Pierre Charles L'Enfant's original layout for Washington D.C. in the 18th century but did not fully develop until the 1920s. In the mid-1940s, plans for the design of the parkway were finalized and construction began in 1947 for the state-maintained portion and in 1950 for the NPS-maintained segment. The entire parkway opened to traffic in stages between 1950 and 1954. In the 1960s and the 1970s, there were plans to give the segment of the parkway owned by the NPS to the state and make it a part of Interstate 295 (I-295) and possibly I-95; however, they never came through and the entire road is today designated as MD 295, despite only being signed on the state portion. Between the 1980s and the 2000s, the NPS portion of the road was modernized and a part of signed MD 295 is in the process of being widened from four to six lanes, with more widening and a new interchange along this segment planned for the future.

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