An influential civic group with strong ties to City Hall and Baltimore boardrooms is proposing a significant change in the region's long-term transit plans by urging policymakers to jump a proposed Lutherville-to-Columbia line ahead of one serving Northeast Baltimore and White Marsh.
The Central Maryland Transportation Alliance made that recommendation as part of a report it released Wednesday promoting the concept of mixed-use development around existing transit hubs and future stations on the proposed east-west Red Line.
Looking decades into the future, the alliance urged that transportation officials make the so-called Yellow Line - as outlined in a 2002 comprehensive regional rail plan - the next priority after the state's hoped-for completion of the Red Line sometime about 2016.
The Yellow Line, which would partly follow the course of the existing Central Light Rail Line, would extend transit service up the Greenmount Avenue/York Road corridor to Towson before reconnecting with the light rail line at Lutherville. South of the city, it would branch off from BWI Marshall Airport toward Columbia Town Center via the Dorsey MARC station.
Alliance officials acknowledged that if the Yellow Line were pushed forward, what is now the next project in line would be held back. That project is the proposed extension of the Metro subway, also known as the Green Line, past its eastern terminus at Johns Hopkins Hospital toward Morgan State University and eventually White Marsh.
Alliance president Otis Rolley III said the group decided that the Yellow Line plan had greater potential to help create a "culture of transit" in metropolitan Baltimore. "We think the Yellow Line really connects residential centers with job centers," he said.
Jamie Kendrick, deputy director of the city's Department of Transportation, said that for now the Dixon administration remains committed to the Green Line extension as the next large transit priority after the Red Line. But he added that city officials have yet to focus on the group's report and that he's willing to consider its recommendations.
Jack Cahalan, spokesman for the Maryland Department of Transportation, said a feasibility study of the Green Line extension is included in the state's six-year comprehensive spending program. The Yellow Line has received no such funding, he said.
The alliance's recommendations carry weight because the group includes some of the city's most influential movers and shakers in business, philanthropy, development and civic life.
The report the group released underscored the importance of transit to future development patterns. It identified 21 "priority" transit stations - existing and planned - that it contends have "tremendous potential" for fostering a mix of residential, office and retail development. The list included the state government complex at Preston Street, where transit-oriented development is well along in the planning process. The state is expecting to break ground on the first phase of that project next summer.
Other stations identified as having a high potential for transit-oriented development include light rail stops along Howard Street and in Westport, and planned Red Line stations such as Highlandtown and Edmondson Village.
