A portion of Falls Road will be closed temporarily from Clipper Mill Road, south to below the 29^th Street Bridge, a two-mile stretch of roadway. This will begin on Monday, August 15 at 4:00 a.m.  

This closure is necessitated by the July 30 storm which caused flooding in Baltimore and the region.  The closure will allow crews to mobilize a crane that will remove debris, driftwood, a vehicle, and two dumpsters that washed into the Jones Falls during the storm.  These items have been prevented from moving further downstream, and into the tunnel under the Jones Falls Expressway, by a drift catcher.  This City-installed barrier consists of concrete columns.

City maintenance crews routinely monitor the drift collector, and they clean it once a month.  For this large removal job, the City will use Civil Construction LLC, an on-call contractor.

The road closure is expected to be in place for approximately 1 week to allow this work to occur, barring any other major storms events.  Approximately 50 tons of material has been removed from the drift catcher following similar storms.

A variable message sign (vms) is already in place on Falls Road advising motorists of the coming closure.  Traffic will be detoured during the closure. Detours will be posted.

The estimated cost for this work in $170.000.