ON WJZ AT 6: Federal and state officials Monday announced the start of a two-year study to close the "Highway to Nowhere" and replace it with a community-led option that reconnects neighborhoods in West Baltimore. https://t.co/pvyAUToRcR pic.twitter.com/zAEfr46REw
— WJZ | CBS Baltimore (@wjz) April 24, 2023
Interview with Channel 13 wjz
Minister Smith, vice-president of BTEC and member of Reconnecting Communities in West Baltimore, remembers a thriving community before his family was forced to move in 1969.
“Now, you see vacant houses, high unemployment, crime. I often fashion it to taking a heart out of a body—the extremities dry up and die. That’s what happened to this community,” Minister Smith said.
The “Highway to Nowhere,” a 1.39-mile stretch of U.S. 40 was built in the 1970s and originally intended to connect I-70 to I-95 and I-83. That project was stopped, but not until after the road severed several West Baltimore neighborhoods.