Rail System

As the state begins in earnest next month a long-overdue $153 million project to upgrade Baltimore's light rail line, riders will face longer waits, more delays and bus rides to get around construction work. The disruptions, detailed by transit officials Friday, will last almost three years while the state adds a second track to 12 miles of the light rail route. When the project is complete, the entire 29-mile route will have two tracks, increasing the reliability and, potentially, the frequency of trains, officials say. But until then, riders will have to wait 20 minutes for a train at most stations, instead of the usual 17. The main light rail line will be broken into two loops, so trains will not run its entire length as they do now. And trains will not be able to use portions of the track under construction.

WHEN IT COMES to mass transit, Washington - with considerable help from the state and federal governments - has been eating Baltimore's lunch for decades. As a result, it may not be possible for Baltimore to catch up to the capital's 40-year jump on creating a first-class regional mass transit system. But Maryland must aggressively commit to doing that - and the time for showing that commitment is right now. Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. must put expansion of Baltimore's light-rail and subway lines high on a list of Maryland transportation priorities due in Congress by the end of this month.

TWO IMPORTANT and highly visible efforts to transform Baltimore's regional transportation system have been put forth - the magnetic levitation train, or maglev, and the MTA's regional rail plan, a collaboratively developed 40-year blueprint for the area's mass transit system. These two are not, as some might suggest, rival predators struggling for control of a single bone of attention and funding. Neither are they separate but equally crucial opportunities for our city and state. In fact, maglev and the rail plan offer a happy synergy, like the parallel rails - or the pair of opposing magnets - of Baltimore's track to the future.

A group of amateur historians hopes the historic President Street Station, where Union troops clashed with an angry mob of Baltimoreans in one of the first skirmishes of the Civil War, will once again welcome trains if the state expands downtown rail service. At President and Fleet streets, the head house of the 152-year-old station stands today in the shadow of the glimmering new Marriott hotel. From 1850 to 1922, trains carried passengers to the station from points north and east. A group of history buffs, the Friends of the President Street Station, hopes that will happen once more.

Nothing makes Robin Ullman happier than bumper-to-bumper gridlock on the Jones Falls Expressway. The nightmarish traffic reports remind her, on a daily basis, why she takes the Baltimore Metro. "It sure beats the JFX at rush hour," the public defender, who lives in Owings Mills, said yesterday morning, as she zipped to her downtown job on a half-empty subway car. Total travel time: 25 minutes. Yes, Baltimore has a subway. A few people even ride it. State officials are betting that a lot more people will ditch their cars for the train in the short term if the subway is extended from Johns Hopkins Hospital to Morgan State University and if a rail line is built from Woodlawn to Fells Point.

State transportation officials laid out the first steps yesterday for an ambitious 109-mile Baltimore rail system that would connect the suburbs to downtown like spokes on a wheel. Transportation Secretary John D. Porcari said the state will seek federal money next year to begin planning a new rail line from Woodlawn to Fells Point and the extension of a line in Northeast Baltimore. Those two lines, totaling 14.6 miles, would cost about $2.1 billion and could be running by the end of the decade under the most aggressive scenario.

AMTRAK gets a lot of blame for failing to accomplish the impossible. Congress wants it to become a national passenger railroad system, which means it must operate unprofitable train routes on creaky, outdated tracks. But lawmakers also want Amtrak to become self-sufficient. Talk about a conundrum. A national passenger rail system will always need generous public support. That's true not just in America, but also in countries such as Germany and France, which operate much better systems than we do. The Amtrak Reform Council, an oversight committee created by Congress, last week recommended that lawmakers allow private carriers to compete for Amtrak's passenger service.

THE EYES of the nation recently were once again focused on Baltimore's - and the nation's - most serious transportation issue: our railroad tunnels. This problem has been part of the public debate for more than half a century. The trouble this time was with the CSX system's Howard Street Tunnel from Camden Yards to Mount Royal Station, but equally serious problems affect the Amtrak and Norfolk Southern systems' series of tunnels into Baltimore for both passenger and freight services. On September 20, 1976, The Sun headlined, "Derailment causes rerouting of 52 trains; East Coast hurt."

WASHINGTON - Amtrak is into one of its classic budget squeezes; some long-distance lines may be axed. The country is in an economic downturn. A conservative president sits in the White House. Yet oddly enough, the prospects may be the brightest ever for serious national investment in passenger rail. The reason is clear, says James RePass, president of the National Corridors Initiative: Americans are increasingly caught in monumental metro-area traffic jams. Air travel remains "miserable," even in the current slump.

MARYLAND'S MASS transit administration needs the freedom to make Baltimore's system work. That didn't happen during much of the past four years, while Ronald L. Freeland headed the Mass Transit Administration. Gov. Parris N. Glendening gave Mr. Freeland the go-ahead to take only the smallest steps toward improving transit - and most of that happened only in the last two years. The city's pitiful light-rail line is finally headed toward double-tracking; the subway soon will begin operating Sundays; the legislature has reduced the percentage of operating revenue state transit systems are required to collect from the fare box; and a promising shuttle-bus service started operating this year in Hampden.