The Banner’s recent article on Anne Arundel County’s public shoreline (Anne Arundel County has 533 miles of shoreline. One mile is for public swimming, July 24, 2025) makes clear the importance of ensuring our waters are truly accessible to the public. Baltimore is in a great position to lead on this issue on our own waterfront.

Permanent public access to the waterfront has been central to Baltimore’s vision since it began transitioning away from an industrial harbor. In fact, almost all of Baltimore’s nonindustrial waterfront is publicly accessible, capturing huge sections of the harbor and the Middle Branch.

Today, you can walk on a nearly contiguous 7-mile public promenade connecting nine neighborhoods, 75 acres of parks, 14 museums and more than 130 restaurants and shops. You can kayak along the Baltimore Blueway on over 20 miles of designated water trails for paddlers of all abilities.

But there is work to do to better connect our waterfront to neighborhoods throughout our city and provide more opportunities for everyone to enjoy it.

The Gwynns and Jones Falls trails connect dozens of neighborhoods to our waterfront, but there are gaps that can make them hard to navigate and the connections are hard to find. We have acres of parks and miles of promenade for everyone to spend time along the waterfront but not enough opportunities for engagement with the water itself.

Next spring, the Waterfront Partnership will cut the ribbon on an Americans With Disabilities Act-accessible kayak launch at the Inner Harbor, with two additional public access points to the Blueway currently on the drawing board.

And most days — it’s true — the harbor is clean enough to swim in. Alongside continued efforts to improve recreational and environmental water quality, we need to address the fact that Baltimore doesn’t have a location for people to safely, regularly enjoy swimming in the harbor.

In introducing the vision of a harbor for the people in 1963, then-Mayor Theodore McKeldin noted that “very few cities in the world have been blessed … with such a potentially beautiful harbor area within the heart of downtown.” That potential has been realized. Now it’s time to make sure we can all enjoy it.

Dan Taylor is president of the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore

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