more serious obstacles will certainly be placed in the way of a proper meeting of growing traffic needs, where obstructing private interests are now reaching their point of least resistance.
Northeast of the intersection of Harford and North Avenues, and also on the line of one of the possible new arteries, another area is indicated that until recently formed the largely open grounds of a private school. On this site there has already arisen a large and important new retail mercantile establishment, that conceivably might conflict (though it probably will not) with the best location of a needed express highway and trans-city connection serving the northeastern suburbs and the northern extension of U.S. 1.
The new street and highway facilities indicated on the map illustrate the several classes described in the preceding pages of this report, and in their location illustrate the manner in which such facilities may utilize to advantage existing topographic and other conditions that favor the accomplishment of a sound and adequate plan.
The main rural highways approaching the city are continued at present as streets running directly to the city center, some on diagonal lines cutting across the rectangular block plan. Historically, these streets are, in fact, the lines of the old turnpikes which, a century ago, radiated from the small Baltimore town of that period, located at what is now the center of the modern city.
Not only are these streets so located as to form the logical connections of the principal rural highways through the city and with its center, but also, they occupy the most favorable lines for the highway facilities needed to accommodate the daily movement between the city and the suburban sections that have developed naturally along and around each of the entering highways.
But, while in location the streets referred to would seem to offer the best possible avenues for the movement of traffic into and out of the central city, they do not actually serve this purpose; and the reason is that in the older part of the city they retain the narrow width of the old turnpikes.
The traffic map, plate 53, shows the radial lines of Belair Road, Harford Road, Reisterstown Road, and Park Heights Avenue at the north of the city bringing heavy traffic flows as far in as North Avenue. At this line all of these streets suddenly narrow and continue into the center of the city with the width of the early 19th-century roads they once were. In consequence a large part of their traffic turns along North Avenue and proceeds east or west to Charles Street or Mount Royal Avenue and immediately adjacent streets, which then carry it in concentrated streams southward to the business section.
The condition on Harford Avenue immediately south of North Avenue is illustrated in plate 48.
The new street plan, illustrated in plate 52, contemplates the construction of modern express arteries along the approximate lines of several of the existing radial streets, running to suitably designed intersections and distributing squares, located at the east and west sides of the central business section.
At least through the older parts of the city these express routes should be constructed as depressed, or elevated highways, or subways; and the topography and other conditions suggest an appropriate employment of each method, but principally the first.
