Tunnels

A school bus caught fire in the Fort McHenry Tunnel this afternoon, closing six of its eight traffic lanes and causing significant traffic backups, but police said the blaze was extinguished without injuries. Sgt. Jonathan Green, a spokesman for the Maryland Transportation Authority Police, said a school bus occupied by a driver and an assistant caught fire about 4:30 p.m. in the left northbound bore of the four-bore tunnel. Green said the two occupants escaped the bus without injury.

Maryland transportation officials plan to close a portion of the Fort McHenry tunnel to accommodate people participating in a 5k event. The northbound right portion of the tunnel will be closed to vehicle traffic at 7 p.m. for the Fort McHenry Tunnel 5k Run/Walk. It is scheduled to reopen by noon Sunday. Officials say they will send all northbound traffic through one portion of the tunnel. They will also close the northbound I-95 ramp to Keith Avenue during the same timeframe.

In the aftermath of an August derailment in the Howard Street Tunnel, CSX Transportation and Baltimore have jointly announced a series of actions to improve safety in the more than 100-year-old structure, including improved communications, stepped-up inspections and an accelerated track replacement program. The agreement reflects an increasingly cooperative relationship between the freight railroad and City Hall and stands in stark contrast to the finger-pointing and recriminations that marked the response to the near-catastrophic 2001 fire in the tunnel.

CSX Transportation has determined that the cause of the Aug. 5 derailment in the Howard Street Tunnel was defective track, spokesman Gary Saese said Thursday. Saese said "there's no doubt" that a broken rail caused 13 cars to jump the tracks in and near the more than 100-year-old tunnel — the site of a more serious derailment in 2001 that led to a chemical fire that disrupted downtown Baltimore for a week. The spokesman said the railroad had not determined what led to the break, but he said such damage typically is caused by an internal defect.

Baltimore received a relatively gentle reminder last week of some unfinished business that it can ill afford to ignore. A CSX freight train derailed last Thursday in the Howard Street Tunnel, the scene of the nearly disastrous July 18, 2001, derailment and fire that paralyzed much of downtown for a week. Thirteen cars of a 79-car train left the tracks – 11 of them in the tunnel under Howard Street and two outside the portal at Mount Royal Avenue. Baltimore got lucky when none of the hazardous materials being hauled by the train escaped, but traffic on the line was not restored until late Friday.

CSX Transportation finished the removal of derailed cars from the Howard Street Tunnel today and is expected to resume rail traffic through it this evening, according to a railroad spokesman. Thirteen cars of a 79-car freight train left the tracks Thursday in the tunnel and outside its northern portal at Mount Royal Avenue for reasons yet to be determined, said CSX spokesman Bob Sullivan. With the cars removed, he said, railroad officials were repairing and inspecting the tracks to prepare for a resumption of traffic.

A CSX train carrying hazardous material derailed Thursday morning in the Howard Street tunnel, the site of a similar accident in July 2001 that paralyzed the city and freight travel along the East Coast for a week. Officials said 13 cars in a 79-car train left the track about 8:15 a.m. at Howard Street and Mount Royal Avenue. Eleven cars derailed inside the tunnel, including one carrying fluorosilicic acid, a fire spokesman said. All of the cars remained upright and no hazardous material spilled, according to Roman Clark, the spokesman.

In an effort to protect the largest known bat refuge in Maryland, state officials planning a 4.7-mile extension of the Western Maryland Rail Trail have decided to detour cyclists around an abandoned railroad tunnel where hundreds of bats winter. Tourism interests in the region had hoped the 4,350-foot-long Indigo Tunnel would become a prime attraction for bicyclists pedaling west from the trail's current terminus at Pearre. But biologists discovered its rock walls are home to an estimated 1,400 hibernating bats, including some rare or endangered species.

The Maryland Transportation Authority is launching a road resurfacing project on Interstate 95 south of the Fort McHenry Tunnel that is expected to force regular lane closings and detours over the next 18 months. The $12.4 million project affects a 2-mile stretch of I-95 between the city line and a point just north of Washington Boulevard, as well as the Caton and Joh Avenue overpasses. According to authority spokeswoman Teri Moss, the state gave the contractor the green light Monday to begin work, and the first lane closings are expected Thursday from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. and Monday at the same times.

The Maryland Transit Administration has revised its proposal for the east-west Red Line, scrapping a plan to use a single track in a tunnel under Cooks Lane in West Baltimore and replacing it with a more costly double-track option. According to the MTA, new ridership estimates have come in higher, allowing it to propose a somewhat more expensive transit line including some of the features that had been trimmed to keep it within the federal government's cost-benefit formula.