PR campaign, downtown parking options, new light rail helped keep fans out of jams en route to new ballpark and back home again
By Laura Van Pate
While fans were flocking to Camden Yards on opening day in 1992, David Wallace was at work inside the ballpark, watching monitors and cameras, hoping the brand-new light rail wouldn’t get stuck, traffic wouldn't jam streets, and highways wouldn't back up.
There was a lot at stake.
The new ballpark was built in downtown Baltimore, though many people had favored the suburbs, arguing that there would be more room for parking lots.
If fans couldn’t get to the new stadium or park their vehicles, if they were fuming in traffic jams on city streets or on the interstate, then opening day would be a transportation disaster.
Wallace, an engineer at the company RK&K, and David Chapin, the director of the policy and governmental affairs office at the Maryland Department of Transportation, had been tasked with getting fans to and from the ballpark with ease.
They had been anticipating this day for years, planning parking lots and pedestrian walkways, and analyzing traffic and transportation.
Opening day for the ballpark was also one of the first operating days for the new light rail line, which was meant to get fans downtown and to the stadium.
The Maryland Department of Transportation warned that the new system might not be able to handle as many fans as wanted to ride. But the state had staged trial runs during which the line had performed well.
“We practiced all of this in advance before the stadium opened,” Chapin said. “We were pretty confident.”
Another issue was parking.
Supporters of a suburban ballpark had argued that parking would be easier there, but Wallace and Chapin knew the blocks surrounding the stadium offered plenty of space.
“Since the stadium was located at the edge of downtown, it meant we could rely on 30,000 public parking spaces within walking distance to the stadium. Fans didn’t have to rely on stadium parking lots; they could spread out through downtown, which helped a lot with reducing congestion,” Chapin said.
Still, despite their confidence, Wallace and Chapin decided fans needed more information on how to get to the new ballpark, whether by car or public transportation.
They turned to Sandy Hillman, a former Baltimore director of promotions who worked in public relations. While Wallace and Chapin were staging trial runs of the new light rail, Hillman was designing ads and putting maps up around the state.
“The goal was to make people feel like it was easy to come to Camden Yards,” Hillman said. “We weren’t just using legacy media, television ads, radio ads, or newspapers, but also brochures and materials placed in unconventional places around the state like post office branches and libraries. Our outreach was ubiquitous. We were everywhere.”
Wallace and Chapin weren’t the only ones focused on traffic. Then-Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke remembers preparing for the worst on opening day.
Schmoke was worried that he would be blamed for traffic congestion while Maryland Gov. William Donald Schaefer would be applauded for the new ballpark.
“I was very concerned when building the stadium that the one problem would be people getting in and out of there,” Schmoke said in a 2025 interview with the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism. “Schaefer would get the praise for the beautiful stadium, and Schmoke would get the criticism for the traffic.”
During the opening day game, Schmoke’s anxiety led him to walk around outside Camden Yards to look for problems. But traffic looked good.
“I don’t remember much about the game, just about how there was no headline like I thought there would be,” Schmoke said.
Inside the stadium, at David Wallace’s monitor, traffic flow and light rail times also looked good.
“It was like an orchestra of a symphony,” Wallace said. “It was actually music to have all this traffic arriving downtown, and, I thought, happily and peacefully.”
Peter Jensen, a Baltimore Sun transportation reporter, summed the traffic situation up in an article published the day after opening day.
“They came by car,” he wrote. “They came by train. They came by bus. What they didn’t come by was a serious traffic jam.”