Federal highway officials are spending $1 million to look into widening the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, but the plan requested by a Maryland congressman has come as an unpleasant surprise to local officials. Officials in Greenbelt are especially concerned, as the road bisects their city. They fear that adding a third lane in each direction to Md. Route 295 from New York Avenue just outside D.C. all the way up to Interstate 695 just south of Baltimore would encourage sprawl and cut into vital green space.

“The city also strongly believes that widening the parkway will change the very nature of the roadway from a parkway to an interstate,” Mayor Judith Davis wrote to the Federal Highway Administration last month.