While a bus system is still in the running for the MTA's final choice, much of the discussion yesterday focused on light rail.
Maryland Transportation Secretary John D. Porcari said there has been much innovation in the design of light rail cars since Baltimore's system opened 15 years ago. They are sleeker and lower to the ground now, making them fit into the scale of communities better, he said.
"We are going to make sure this system is built into the fabric of the community," he said. "That is our pledge to you."
Lee Kemp, chairman of the board of the Regional Transit District of Denver, said transit expansion in Denver has yielded new jobs, reduced traffic and offered other quality-of-life improvements through a system that transports 97 million passengers each year.
"The community is an important part of making this all happen," he said. "If we don't address the transportation needs today, it's going to be miserable in the future."
Baltimore officials hope to be able to take their Red Line proposal to public hearing by fall.
Rushon Brooks, 63, who inherited his parents' house near the West Baltimore MARC station in 2005, had attended a few meetings on the Red Line before coming to the summit.
"It would go about two blocks from my residence," he said of the house where his son now lives. "The value of the property would go up."
Others who attended yesterday had business ventures in mind that could be located near stations as part of what officials term transit-oriented development - residential, retail and office projects that cluster around transit stops in a model that has been successful around the country.
The idea of an east-west transit line in Baltimore is one that the Greater Baltimore Committee has backed for six years.
Existing lines come within two blocks of one another downtown, but don't connect, Donald Fry, president of the GBC, said in an interview.
"In a region that's highly populated, you can't just rely on highways," Fry said in an interview. "We've got to have strong mobility if we're going to grow by the hundreds of thousands that we're projected to grow by in coming years. If you wait until transportation becomes a crisis, it's too difficult to build out of it."
The region already is starting to see congestion problems, he noted.
State Sen. Verna L. Jones, a Baltimore Democrat, said she hoped that the work being done on the project would "make sure that a 'highway to nowhere' never happens again in Baltimore."
Baltimore's "Highway to Nowhere" is an aborted freeway that starts west out of downtown then suddenly terminates after about 11/2 miles instead of continuing on as planned to link Interstate 70 and Interstate 95. Once-stable neighborhoods were ripped up to make room for six lanes of sunken highway, now part of U.S. 40.
june.arney@baltsun.com
