Outside her barbershop at Main Street and Avon Beach Road in Turner Station, Courtney Speed stops talking midsentence. Voices are no match for the rumble of passing trucks.

A sound wall doesn’t offer much of a buffer — not with the increased volume of tractor trailers seeking alternative routes since the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed two years ago.

“Can you imagine two or three trucks going down here at once?” Speed, 86, asked, gesturing to the narrow road with cars parked on both sides.

That truck traffic has shaken the foundation of her home and broken the windowsill next to Speed’s Barber & Beauty, a building that housed a grocery store before the pandemic.

Speed commiserated last week with neighbors Muriel L. Gray and Don Gue about the slow pace of rebuilding the bridge.

Gue, 71, said he rarely gets over to Pasadena anymore to see friends because a once-15-minute drive now takes an hour. Gray, 82, lamented that a recent trip to Annapolis took 2 1/2 hours instead of the pre-collapse 45 minutes. And Speed, whose son commutes from Washington on weekends to cut regulars’ hair at her shop, drives an hour extra each way.

“It’s been two years, and they’re just now getting the pilings in,” Gue said. “People here are really put out. Day in, day out, up until midnight, there is always a bus, a truck, coming one way or the other.”

Turner Station is one of many communities on both sides of the Patapsco River left isolated and reeling when the Dali container ship struck the Key Bridge on March 26, 2024, causing the steel beams to accordion into the Patapsco River and killing six men working on the bridge.

Truck traffic complaints predate the bridge collapse, but residents of Dundalk neighborhoods such as Broening Manor, St. Helena, German Hill and Turner Station say they see and feel many more trucks on their narrow streets. The heavy equipment damages roads, leaving large potholes. Despite signs saying no trucks over five tons can pass, oversize loads routinely travel the residential streets. One sheared off a traffic light at the Sollers Point circle in Turner Station.

“Traffic patterns in Dundalk and surrounding communities are still feeling the effects of the bridge being gone,” Baltimore County spokesperson Dakarai Turner said.

The county is pursuing federal funding for road repaving, he said. The most impacted roads include Sollers Point Road and Delvale, Dundalk and Wise avenues.

When the county launched a mobile career center to help people affected by the collapse find new jobs, the first place it went was Turner Station, the county spokesperson said.

County Executive Kathy Klausmeier will join other elected officials to commemorate the six lives lost and the impact on the region.

“We’re focused on what comes next — keeping our roads safe, supporting our residents and businesses, and continuing the work to rebuild and strengthen this region," she said Tuesday.

Created to house Black steelworkers at nearby Bethlehem Steel in segregated times, Turner Station is one of Baltimore’s oldest Black communities.

After the bridge collapsed, U.S. Rep. Kweisi Mfume, who grew up in Turner Station, wanted to help the community and last month presented the county with $3.15 million to support flood mitigation efforts there. The money is about a fourth of what the community needs to address flooding.

The situation isn’t much better in Anne Arundel County. The neighborhoods of Brooklyn in Baltimore and Brooklyn Park and Curtis Bay in Anne Arundel County instantly felt the impacts of the Key Bridge collapse, said Meredith Chaiken, CEO of the Greater Baybrook Alliance, an organization focused on revitalizing those communities.

“Immediately, the traffic patterns changed drastically,” Chaiken said. “We were suddenly very congested with cars and especially trucks that couldn’t take the bridge, so they were taking bypass routes that went right through our neighborhoods.”

Each of those communities had “designated truck routes” through them, but truck traffic on those thoroughfares soared following the bridge collapse. Neighbors worry those roads can’t handle the added demand, Chaiken said. And, she added, who wants to sit outside in that kind of environment?

“It’s stressing the infrastructure and the people and the businesses that are trying to function here,” she said.

The increased truck traffic is a public health hazard that disproportionately harms lower-income communities, studies show. Diesel engines emit higher pollutant concentrations than gasoline ones. The greatest concentrations of these toxic chemicals, which cause lung and heart problems, show up closest to streets and highways busy with truck traffic.

The public hears little about these long-term impacts because they often hit sequestered Black communities such as Turner Station the worst, said Marccus D. Hendricks, a University of Maryland associate professor of urban studies and environmental planning.

“When crises of any kind strike, whether infrastructure collapses, floods or fires, it’s usually the most marginalized amongst us who feel the impacts first and hardest, and the last or least likely to fully recover,” he said.

Much of the truck traffic in this area of Baltimore County comes from the neighboring Port of Baltimore and Tradepoint Atlantic, the massive logistics hub at the former Bethlehem Steel site.

Aaron Tomarchio, Tradepoint’s executive vice president of corporate affairs, said he and his team have worked on the traffic problems with neighbors and state officials. Ensuring the Broening Highway access ramp to Interstate 695 at the foot of the collapsed bridge was operating alleviated some problems.

“For trucks coming to and from the Port of Baltimore to Tradepoint, there should be NO reason trucks would be going through local roadways,” he said in an email.

Tradepoint also installed signs directing truck traffic away from local communities, advocated for more state signage and provided updates to GPS services in multiple languages.

Tradepoint is grappling with its own revised expectations post-collapse. The commute times of workers who bought homes in Anne Arundel doubled. And it’s difficult to market its retail sites without the 30,000 cars crossing the bridge daily, Tomarchio said.

It didn’t take long after the bridge fell for companies to reach out to Anne Arundel Economic Development Corp.

“We heard from businesses that there were traffic impacts, that they were experiencing increased costs to doing business, struggling to retain employees and customer foot traffic had decreased,” said Amy Gowan, president and CEO of the quasi-governmental organization.

Plenty of people changed jobs because of longer commutes. One was Towson resident Jeff Hagen, who loved his job and 40-minute commute as security director for Luminis Health’s Anne Arundel Medical Center.

“First of all, it was just a beautiful view. Very relaxing,” Hagen said.

Once the bridge fell, he spent three hours in the car every day. He left for a job at MedStar Health’s Franklin Square Medical Center last June.

“I was missing out on activities with the family. Hanging out with friends. Going to the gym. Even if I could go to the gym, I was too exhausted to want to go,” Hagen said.

Derrick Lyons, a retired trucker and longshoreman who often drove over the bridge, sees a silver lining in the collapse that isolated Dundalk neighborhoods.

Lyons lived in the bridge’s shadow and heard diesel trucks crossing every night. Even with more trucks on nearby streets, he said, his home is quieter now.

“Fifty times less noise at my house at night, easily,” he said. “I sleep much better with that bridge gone.”