While the effort to improve Baltimore's transit system passed an important milestone last week when Gov. Martin O'Malley selected a specific plan for an east-west light rail line, The Battle of the Red Line is far from over.
Residents in Canton and other areas along the route vow to keep fighting the $1.6 billion plan, which they regard as an assault on the peace, parking and property values in their neighborhoods. And there are two likely battlefields.
"I expect it to play out in Annapolis and in Washington," said Ben Rosenberg, a Canton resident and leader of the anti-Red Line forces.
The stakes are high. Both opponents and backers of the Red Line acknowledge that blocking construction could mean years of delay for any improvement to Baltimore's rail transit system. Even under the most optimistic scenario, the Red Line would not be completed until 2016.
O'Malley's decision may not be popular with some city voters. But to proponents, his selection of a plan that puts rail cars on the surface of Edmondson Avenue and Boston Street was a necessary bow to the realities of federal financing requirements.
And it brings clarity to what was a confusing state of affairs. With his decision, all the remaining alternatives are off the table. The governor's plan is the Red Line - and people are either for it or against it.
Opponents of the 14-mile line from Bayview to Woodlawn have three primary possible lines of attack - through the Federal Transit Administration, the General Assembly and the courts. But stopping the Red Line won't be easy in any forum.
The first place foes can go is the FTA, which will receive Maryland's application for federal funding of the Red Line and evaluate it along with competing projects from around the country.
But that agency is not a court of appeal for outraged neighbors to raise complaints about noise, traffic disruptions, aesthetics, property values or parking spaces. According to spokesman Paul Griffo, the agency leaves those matters to local government.
"FTA doesn't really get involved in the local decision-making process. It really wouldn't be appropriate for us to do so," Griffo said. "Our role is to determine eligibility for federal funding. ... It's up to the local government to come up with a locally preferred alternative and bring it to us."
