Viewfinder: The Tunnel to Nowhere

It's a tunnel to nowhere that nobody wants, nobody needs, and apparently can't be fixed.

For years, residents have complained about a pedestrian tunnel beneath Hammonds Ferry Road and the CSX tracks to connect Lansdowne with an undistinguished dead-end of Sulphur Spring Road.

Built in 1967, the tunnel may have once made sense as an accommodation to allow people to cross the tracks safely. But in 2010 the tunnel has no practical purpose to benefit commerce or the community, except to serve as a gathering place for furtive activities.

The tunnel is strewn with trash, covered with graffiti, and reeks of urine.

Fill it up, close it off, cover it with a gate, people have suggested. Despite the repeated pleas of nearby residents and business-owners who have endured this eyesore so long, a solution seems no closer in hand.

It could happen, if there were money to pay for it and somebody stood up and claimed ownership of the tunnel. Ownership of the tunnel, however, remains murky. For years, CSX and Baltimore County have played hot potato, each claiming that the tunnel belongs to the other.

A recent report in Arbutus Times suggested that at long last the logjam had been broken. But alas the celebration was premature. A follow-up piece days later had a more familiar tone, with the ownership of the tunnel once again in doubt.

And so it remains an open, reeking, festering tunnel in the center of Lansdowne that nobody needs, nobody wants, and can't be fixed.