Motorists driving through the Baltimore region may notice several ramps to nowhere along I-95 as they travel into or out of Baltimore City. Once upon a time, these structures were part of a massive regional highway plan.We dug into the archives at the Regional Information Center (RIC) and found the 1965 Maryland State Roads Commission Recommended Master Highway Plan. The document was a grand proposal for I-70 - the major highway that begins in the Baltimore City neighborhood of Franklintown and runs east-west through Maryland to Breezewood, Pa. As put forth more than five decades ago, this highway would have extended to meet I-95 in Baltimore City’s central business district. Problems with traffic congestion and flow already were in full swing in the early 1960s in the Baltimore region. The plan projects growth of more than 2.6 million residents and more than 700,000 vehicles by 1980. This was a tall order for the region’s road network. So as the U.S. Department of Transportation constructed I-95 north and south through central Maryland, the Recommended Master Highway Plan was the solution. The ramps were built, but the I-70 connection never came to fruition. Nor did the construction of the proposed I-83 route through Central and South Baltimore, for that matter. I-70 was scheduled to go straight through the Baltimore City neighborhoods of Fells Point and Canton, while many of the planned higher-occupancy roadways ran through historically low-income and African-American neighborhoods. That’s why community activists, such as Barbara Mikulski, then a fresh graduate of the University of Maryland’s School of Social Work and east Baltimore native, organized city residents from east to west to stop the projects in their tracks. Source: Baltimore Metropolitan Area Transportation Study. Master Highway Plan