After six years of planning and a recent round of public hearings, a clear consensus has emerged among civic and business leaders about what a long-debated east-west transit line through Baltimore would look like - if it is ever built in the face of determined community opposition.
While a half-dozen alternatives for building the so-called Red Line remain on the table, most of them have been practically eliminated either as a result of excessive cost or lagging support.
Supporters say the Red Line - which would serve some of the area's largest employers and intersect the north-south Central Light Rail Line - fills a glaring gap in Baltimore's transportation network. If the project can make it through the federal approval process and avoid the pitfalls of racial politics surrounding it, the line could open as early as 2012.
The favored alternative, openly supported by the Greater Baltimore Committee and tacitly backed by Mayor Sheila Dixon, is the one that the Maryland Transit Administration calls 4-C.
It would be a $1.6 billion, 14.6-mile light rail line from Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center to the Medicare-Medicaid complex in Woodlawn. Another possibility, a bus system that would run in dedicated lanes, received scant attention during the recent public hearings.
The 4-C line would serve such employment centers as the Social Security Administration, Bayview and the University of Maryland, Baltimore. By connecting with the existing north-south light rail line and the Metro subway, it would greatly expand the reach of rail transit in the Baltimore region. It would run underground in two tunnels - one along Cooks Lane in West Baltimore and the other though downtown, Inner Harbor East and Fells Point - and have surface sections as well.
"For the first time, we have the beginning of a true transit system rather than mere transit lines," GBC President Donald C. Fry said at a public hearing.
Where the alternative runs into fierce opposition is where it emerges from the ground.
The 4-C line would run on the surface along Edmondson Avenue (U.S. 40) through the neighborhoods of Edmondson Village and Allendale. The MTA has signaled that an alternative with a tunnel along Edmondson Avenue would cost far too much to give it any chance of being approved by the Federal Transit Administration, which will weigh the costs and benefits of the MTA's Red Line proposal against competing projects around the country.
