By Robert C. Keith|May 05, 2009
The time is at hand for the Maryland Transit Administration to make a comprehensive review of the whole picture before finally selecting a "locally preferred alternative" for Baltimore's Red Line.
Trolleys, or streetcars as we also call them, were the lifeblood of public transportation in Baltimore for many years. Like the buses of today, they were individual vehicles operating in traffic, serving the communities without taking out parking lanes or travel lanes.
But the MTA has never proposed a streetcar line for service on Boston Street or anywhere else in the city. The proposed Red Line is a regional three-unit train service, operating every 10 minutes in peak periods, in "dedicated lanes" that displace existing parking and travel lanes and require block-and-a-half-long, high-walled portals wherever they emerge from underground tunnels.
The Red Line was conceived as a $2.5 billion project when proposed in 2002 as part of the Baltimore Region Rail System Plan. As now presented by the MTA, the line would cost about $1.5 billion, with the savings coming, in part, from trying to squeeze the light rail service into residential streets of limited width that are overrun by commuter traffic already. This has provoked demands to go underground for additional, expensive tunneling - or, failing that, to not build at all or consider a return to the more community-friendly streetcar.
One purpose of the Red Line is to lure drivers of "choice" out of their cars at park-and-ride stops and complete their commute into the city by rail. The MTA has identified only about 100 possible spaces in the Canton Crossing area of Boston Street, but has found 1,000 spaces - and probably many more - on the campus of Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. To the consternation of many in Southeast Baltimore, the MTA proposes to access the Bayview spaces by way of a dogleg through Canton Crossing and Highlandtown/Greektown, rather than by extending the existing premium-quality Metro eastward to Bayview, by surface and elevated piers, from its present unfortunate terminus at Hopkins Hospital on Broadway. Bayview should be accessed from both directions, Hopkins and Canton, utilizing existing rail right of ways.
The Red Line, by itself, will not necessarily reduce peak-hour congestion in major corridors such as Boston Street and Edmondson Avenue. That won't happen until the politicians agree to support the transit investment with "congestion pricing" of key roadways, targeting single-occupant vehicles during peak hours.
To date, Red Line planning has been constrained by the extremely restrictive cost-effectiveness criteria of the federal "New Starts" program. But this expires in September and will be rewritten by the new Obama administration - which has already signaled its support for rail transit.
Before making a choice we may regret, shouldn't we give the president a chance to keep his word?
Robert C. Keith lives in Fells Point and is a Senate-appointed member of the Red Line Citizen's Advisory Council. His e-mail is rkeith4@verizon.net.
