Weekend JFX lane and ramp closures to snarl southbound traffic

Southbound drivers on the Jones Falls Expressway have been forced into a tighter, slower corridor this weekend, with two lanes closed between the 29th Street access ramp and Guilford Avenue and both the North Avenue ramp to southbound I-83 and the Maryland Avenue exit ramp shut down for road work. The closures began Friday at 9 a.m. and are scheduled to run through about 11 p.m. Sunday, weather permitting, putting the most strain on commuters, downtown workers, delivery drivers and anyone trying to move through central Baltimore.

Baltimore City Department of Transportation warned motorists to expect shifting traffic patterns in the work zone and to use alternate routes. The agency also urged drivers to download the Waze app for live detour navigation, a sign that the city expects congestion to ripple beyond the expressway itself and into nearby streets serving downtown Baltimore and Mount Vernon.

The impact is outsized because the JFX remains one of the city’s most important north-south links. Baltimore City DOT manages 2,000 miles of roads, 7 miles of highways and hundreds of bridges, and the Jones Falls Expressway is the narrow slice of that network that carries some of the heaviest daily traffic. The route was conceived in the 1940s, construction began in the 1950s and it opened in 1961. At roughly 9.7 miles long, it is short by interstate standards, but it functions as a backbone for getting into and out of the city’s core.

That same corridor has also become a focus of enforcement and safety efforts. In 2025, Mayor Brandon Scott and DOT Director Veronica P. McBeth announced expanded automated speed enforcement on the JFX, saying the cameras were being placed where speeding and crashes have been a concern. Under Maryland law, a speeding citation from those cameras carries a $40 civil penalty and no license points, and the revenue must first cover operating costs before remaining funds go to expressway improvements.

For now, the weekend work means southbound traffic has fewer lanes, fewer ramp options and less room to recover from delay. Drivers heading toward downtown, Mount Vernon or other parts of central Baltimore have had to plan around the bottleneck at 29th Street, the closure at North Avenue and the exit shutdown at Maryland Avenue. The city’s message was simple: expect the corridor to move differently until the lanes reopen Sunday night.