One year later, people who live and work east of Baltimore are adjusting to an interstate broken at the water’s edge.

With the Francis Scott Key Bridge gone, they say they have lost a vital connection to the world.

Drive I-695 in Eastern Baltimore County towards what was once the Key Bridge and traffic falls away with each exit. Congressman Johnny Olszewski, who grew up in Dundalk, said there is a strange stillness.

“It is an eerie reminder, when you see the sign that says ‘no additional exits’ or ‘must exit’ before whatever the exit number is, that it really is a reminder daily of what was lost that day,” Olszewski said.

According to data from the State Highway Administration, there are roughly 11,000 fewer daily drivers on I-695 at the Cove Road intersection in Dundalk. That’s about eight miles from the bridge.

It used to take Joanette Hawkins nine minutes to get from her home in Turner Station, where she’s lived for 54 years, to the Key Bridge.

“Everything has changed and I don’t have any control,” Hawkins said. “It’s like you lost all control.”

Hawkins added, “I don’t do tunnels. I have a phobia of going through any tunnel. So in order for me to get where I used to go in Glen Burnie in 15 minutes, it takes me about an hour with traffic and everything, so my travel is limited.”

Michael Hancock has lived in Turner Station for 62 years. He remembers the Key Bridge being built. It opened in March of 1977.

Hancock said, “It has been like a landmark and not being there anymore it’s like, we’re lost. We’re lost.”

Turner Station is an historically African American community. Residents will tell you that they have felt overlooked and isolated for years, and that it’s worse with the loss of the bridge.

“The isolation is still real,” said Gloria Nelson, the president of the Turner Station Conservation Teams. “You don’t have family members coming over, people to come over to worship at the churches using the bridge. People working on the other side.”

Talking over coffee at a Starbucks off what was the last exit before the bridge, Olszewski reflected on what was lost: the six men who died on the bridge when the container ship Dali struck it last March, and businesses struggling to stay afloat.

“I don’t think we’ll see the full recovery until the bridge is back in place,” Olszewski said. “That being said I have been so proud to watch business after business in this community pivot, adjust and not just in eastern, southeastern Baltimore County, also in Anne Arundel County and in Baltimore City, communities and businesses that just are trying to figure out ways to make it work.”

Tony Cain is a barista at the last-stop-before-the-bridge Starbucks. Ask Cain about the bridge and his father is foremost on his mind. Cain said his dad hauls hazardous chemicals and he can’t go through the Harbor and Fort McHenry tunnels.

“He drives all around Maryland,” Cain said. “He does building technician work for all of the (Wawa) stores along Maryland and even into Pennsylvania. So when he’s going down to Southern Maryland, now he’s got to drive all the way around the beltway when he could have just taken the Key Bridge.”

Customer Holly Bickel lives in Dundalk.

“It’s just weird because you can see it from where my mom lives on Bay Front right there on the water,” Bickel said. “It’s just an iconic thing.”

Despite the Trump administration’s moves to slash the federal budget, Olszewski is confident the money already allocated to rebuild the bridge will not be touched, saying defunding the project would be “morally reprehensible.”

The goal is to open the new bridge and make I-695 whole again in October of 2028.