The past few years have seen the traffic situation around Charles Village go from dangerous to deadly. There have been two Hopkins student fatalities because of reckless driving as well as several non-lethal collisions, not to mention crashes resulting in property damage.
Both Hopkins and Baltimore City deserve praise for attempting to reduce the danger around campus. Notable efforts include an increased presence of HopCops late at night to usher students across the road and provide increased visability for late night drivers.
That being said, this page highly recommends the immediate implementation of the plan to construct a pedestrian bridge across N. Charles Street which has emerged from the Department of Civil Engineering. It is of the utmost importance to move forward with such a project as it has been shown that even efforts with the best of intentions from the city and the administration have simply not been enough to fully mitigate the problems inherent to traffic in the surrounding area. Loyola University, which is only a mile from the Homewood Campus, already has such a bridge in operation.
This bridge should serve to further reduce the amount of traffic accidents which occur in the surrounding area and should also serve to help Baltimore City residents who might also have trouble with the traffic in the area. If the current bridge plan is deemed viable, the administration should spare no expense in the constructing it.
While by no means a definite cure-all to local traffic problems, a pedestrian bridge would help to prevent some of the tragedies which we have seen all too often in recent years — and any price is worth that.
