A small trail running along some of Baltimore’s most notoriously oversized roads has proven to be incredibly popular, and could change how the city’s streets are shaped going forward. The multi-modal trail, called the Big Jump, provides people on foot, bicycle, and more with a way to cross over highways that have long served as a barrier between neighborhoods.

Last August, the Baltimore City Department of Transportation (BCDOT), working with a local bike advocacy group called Bikemore and a national group called PeopleForBikes, installed a rather unusual mobility path using only water-filled traffic barriers. It runs along a 1.4-mile stretch of Druid Park Lake Drive, 28th Street, and Sisson Street in North Baltimore, and crosses over part of I-83.

People using many modes are welcome on the Big Jump. Image by the author.

In the year since the Big Jump first opened, the neighborhood response has exceeded most expectations. Sure, there’s been the occasional complaint from drivers annoyed at the loss of travel lanes. But those have largely been outnumbered by praise from cyclists and pedestrians. Many people use the path to travel to jobs in Remington at places like R. House, a popular local food hall, and people who use mobility devices like wheelchairs and strollers have been especially enthusiastic.

“It is the only accessible way to get across the economic/cultural divide that we have which is the Jones Falls Expressway,” said Graham Coreil-Allen, an artist who lives on Auchentoroly Terrace and as an active member of TAP-Druid Hill, helped contribute art to the Big Jump. “Previously, it was just this sidewalk, which people on rolling devices, no matter what you name them: stroller, wheelchair or bike, could not use. And now we have a way to do that, which is huge.”

To understand why the Big Jump is such a big deal, it helps to understand a bit about the past of the roads it adjoins and the neighborhoods they “connect.”

Patching historic wounds

Up until the 1940s, Druid Hill Park and its surrounding area were highly accessible on foot. Neighboring roads like Auchentoroly Terrace and Greenspring Avenue were all two-lane residential streets, allowing residents to visit the park and easily cross over from Reservoir Hill to Remington.

That all changed in 1948 with the construction of what was known at the time as the Druid Hill Expressway, which cut off the surrounding predominantly working class Jewish and African American neighborhoods from the park—ostensibly to help suburban commuters reach their downtown jobs faster. The Expressway project also created Druid Park Lake Drive, converted Druid Hill Avenue and McCulloh Street into one-way routes, and dramatically widened Auchentoroly Terrace.

Reservoir Hill residents, including NAACP Labor Secretary Clarence Mitchell, Jr., opposed the plan from the beginning. However, since one of the city’s most powerful political bosses, James Pollack, happened to live exactly where the expressway was slated to end, their protests were roundly ignored by Baltimore’s City Council.

By the time construction finished on the nearby Jones Falls Expressway in 1963, Auchentoroly Terrace and Druid Park Lake Drive had been widened even further to serve as feeder roads for the highway. Sixteen pedestrian entrances to Druid Hill Park and hundreds of trees had been destroyed, and childhood asthma rates in the surrounding neighborhoods had skyrocketed.

Aerial view of the Big Jump. Image by Bikemore used with permission.

The white, water-filled plastic barriers mark out the Big Jump. Image by Bikemore used with permission.

Fast forward 53 years to 2016. Fresh off of completing the Green Lane Project, a five-year mission to accelerate bike lane construction throughout the country (including in Baltimore, Washington, DC, Montgomery County, and NoVa), PeopleForBikes launched the Big Jump Project to help 10 cities “radically reimagine their bicycling infrastructure.”

Bikemore Executive Director Liz Cornish and Policy Director Jed Weeks saw an opportunity to not only improve bike access and demonstrate a more Complete Streets-minded approach to Baltimore’s roads, but also to bring a little more equity to a city sorely lacking in it.

Runners on the trail. Image by Bikemore used with permission.

How the project played out

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Baltimore City’s Department of Public Works (DPW) were already set to begin work on a five-year, $140 million project to install a pair of underground drinking water tanks in the Druid Hill Park Reservoir. It would cut off access to one of the park’s most popular features—the walking/biking loop surrounding the reservoir—and also require travel lanes on Druid Park Lake Drive to be closed for construction.

The proposal Weeks and Cornish came up with originally included a protected bike facility on Huntingdon Avenue, a bike boulevard on 27th Street, and a road diet on 25th Street, as well as a path between Remington and Reservoir Hill. They spent a year shepherding through a BCDOT still skittish from the sudden cancellation of the Red Line so that the department could submit it.

“None of that has been completed,” Weeks said. “So it’s kind of funny that all the projects designed to boost ridership in high-ridership areas are not the things that we actually achieved, but we achieved what was probably the biggest piece, which was the connection over to Reservoir Hill.”



That connection was funded in 2017 with a grant and was installed in 2018. In the meantime, Bikemore built up support for the project by working with a variety of groups that weighed in on the design of the Big Jump and a matching BCDOT corridor study of Auchentoly Terrace and Druid Park Lake Drive. Many of those involved are part of The Access Project-Druid Hill, an organization convened by City Councilmember Leon Pinkett, whose district includes most of the Big Jump.

The Big Jump provides a way to cross over the highway. Image by the author.

What’s up next for the Big Jump?

Much of Bikemore’s initial proposal for the Big Jump grant is still unfinished, so Weeks said PeopleforBikes is currently leaving in place the grant for the project, which was originally supposed to be a one-year pilot. Now the task for Toole Design, the local engineering firm currently doing a short-term evaluation of the Big Jump, is to figure out how to replace the current water-filled traffic barriers with a more permanent structure.

That task is slightly more urgent than originally planned, according to Weeks, because DPW’s original plan for installing water pipes in the Druid Hill Park Reservoir may be too expensive to pursue. That would force it to cut into Druid Park Lake Drive right in the middle of the Big Jump’s path, possibly as soon as February 2020. That in turn would force Bikemore and BCDOT to either reroute the Big Jump or create a side-path facility in the grass.

For many projects in Baltimore, that would mean game over. For the Big Jump, it just means the timeline has accelerated a little bit.