You can understand why Jim Clemmens and members of his weekend walking group would like to take a stroll along Loch Raven Reservoir without cars and trucks whizzing by and some of the drivers cursing and making obscene gestures.
Things were better before the pandemic: Saturdays and Sundays, for seven hours a day, yellow gates blocked a section of Loch Raven Drive to motor vehicles, and people enjoyed pleasant saunters along the road. You can understand why they’d want to resume that experience.
What you might not understand is why they can’t get the city of Baltimore, with its sovereignty over the reservoir, to return to the policy it had before COVID-19: Close the road to traffic. The explanation I received sounded pretty much like gibberish, and I’ll get to that in a moment.
First, pardon me while I have an interlude about walking.
It’s great. You can do it anywhere, in a city neighborhood, suburban village or rural hamlet. I saw a guy walking on the grassy shoulder of a farm road in Harford County on Sunday. People walk all the time through my city neighborhood with dogs and children and the occasional cat. There’s a guy who frequently unicycles down my street, and I root for him.
When I walk around Baltimore, I don’t talk on the phone, don’t listen to music, podcasts or cable shows. I think about stuff — about some regrettable thing I said the other day or 20 years ago, about the people I miss and wish I could call, about the last column or the next one, about what to cook for the weekly family dinner.
If you drive all the time, you miss things. Without walking, I would have missed the free concert that came through the open windows of the Peabody Institute on the day I received bad news about an old friend. I would not have noticed the ceramic dogs someone glued to their front steps in South Baltimore.
If you don’t walk, you miss the fine amenities of a neighborhood, like the cushioned rocking chair someone chained to a rain gutter on Light Street, inviting a tired walker to rest. If not for a recent stroll, I would have missed the take-a-book-share-a-book sidewalk library on Lake Avenue, where I picked up Marc Leibovich’s “Thank You for Your Servitude,” about all the Trump lackeys who did not fare well in their lackeytude.
I can understand why people who live on busy streets want to get away from them. It’s good to take a hike among the trees. It’s a good way to clear your head of the noise of the world, to forget about all the lousy things Tucker Carlson said or the depressing state of the country, with so many problems that seem intractable because of political polarization. It’s a good break from the hard reality of teenagers being shot when they should be in the bleachers at Camden Yards or out for a soothing walk along Loch Raven Reservoir.
For at least a couple of decades before the pandemic, gates closed on Loch Raven Drive, on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m., to allow traffic-free walking, running and bicycling between Providence Road and Morgan Mill Road.
When the pandemic hit, the city’s Department of Public Works decided it was best to discourage the weekend gatherings. So they stopped closing the yellow gates.
Since then, as the pandemic restrictions eased, Clemmens and his friends continued walking along the drive. But they found the two-way traffic dangerous. So they started asking DPW about closing the gates again. An online petition asks Mayor Brandon Scott to resume the pre-pandemic policy. (When I wrote this, the petition had 1,584 signatures.)
But there’s been no change, and Clemmens, who goes to the reservoir each weekend, reports hostile motorists driving by and cussing walkers for slowing them down. “Someone is going to get hurt,” he warns.
You can understand why, given the past, Clemmens and others think the city should provide again the gift of a good walk along the reservoir.
It took me 10 days to get a response from DPW about the desire of citizens to see the gates closed. The next paragraph contains most of the official statement I received from DPW’s communications office. (Note: The second quoted sentence was missing a critical verb or two when it arrived by email.)
“Due to the management goals for the City’s water resource, the [reservoir] areas are not managed as park, recreational areas, but as water resource protection areas. In an effort to protect the water source, monitor, and manage activities around the Loch Raven Reservoir, DPW having the gates open, eliminating parking hazards associated with increased recreational activity and enabling better management of crowds. As the weather becomes outdoor-friendly, many runners, bikers, and walkers will frequent the City’s watershed areas and compete for recreational space. It is the department’s desire to ensure the safety of everyone who visits and enjoys the City’s watershed areas while protecting the City’s water resources for the public and our 1.8 million customers.”
I have no idea what to make of all that.
“Very disappointing,” Clemmens said when I shared it with him.
Maybe the mayor can resolve this. He’s a busy fellow dealing with matters more important than weekend walkers. But this one should be easy to fix.
