As Baltimore’s proposed Red Line light rail faces mounting obstacles, the Maryland Transit Administration will present alternative options for a new east-west transit project at a series of public meetings next month.

The Banner reported in March that state transportation officials had prepared contingency plans for the proposed 14-mile light rail train between Woodlawn in Baltimore County and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in East Baltimore amid political and financial headwinds.

Rising costs and dim prospects of securing federal funding — as well as calls from the community to get shovels in the ground as soon as possible — prompted discussions about building the train line in multiple phases or even pivoting to a rapid bus system.

“Now is the time to have those conversations with the community about what the best path forward is,” MTA Administrator Holly Arnold said in an interview.

At the meetings, agency officials will share updated cost estimates, construction timelines, possible geographic alignments and performance metrics for three options:

1. A 14-mile light rail line as previously proposed
2. Building the west half (Woodlawn to downtown Baltimore) of a light rail while planning to build the east half in a future phase
3. A 14-mile bus rapid transit system

Gov. Wes Moore revived the idea of the Red Line in 2023, eight years after his predecessor, Gov. Larry Hogan, canned the project’s first iteration. Moore then selected light rail as the preferred mode for Red Line 2.0 a year later.

The MTA was slated to select one of three alternatives for a preferred route — two that were entirely surface-running and one that included a tunnel underneath downtown — by the end of 2024. But doubts about the project swirled the longer Moore and agency officials went without making such an announcement.

Building a Red Line light rail has always had critics, but questions about the project’s viability grew more pointed when President Donald Trump won a second term. Elected officials and transit advocates saw the multi-billion-dollar infrastructure project in a Democratic-controlled city and state as having little chance at winning a competitive federal construction grant under Trump.

Trump’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2027 makes less money available to localities to build new transit lines, Arnold said. And his transportation department has yet to award any such capital grant anywhere in the country since he took office last year, she added.

Arnold said the MTA wants to keep open the option of pursuing federal funding, but acknowledged Maryland could be left footing the entire bill.

And that would be a tall order. Signs in Annapolis point toward a growing deficit in the coming years. The state’s main pot of money for transportation projects faces its own structural problems amid declining gas tax revenues, and lawmakers still haven’t determined a long-term fix.

Inflation, increased labor costs and tariffs on materials like steel have contributed to staggering price increases for light rail projects. Caitlin Tobin, project director for the Red Line, said in an interview that cities like Seattle and Minneapolis are scaling back proposed light rail expansions or pivoting to bus rapid transit.

A 14-mile surface-level light rail line is now estimated to cost $4.7 billion to $9 billion and take up to 12 years to complete. If the project is built in sections, a first phase between Edmondson Village in West Baltimore and the Shot Tower downtown would likely come in around $2.2 billion and still take roughly a decade.

Building bus rapid transit, a souped-up version of a bus line that would have stations and its own dedicated travel lane, would cost $750 million to $1 billion and take three to five years to complete. That’s less than half the price the MTA estimated in 2023. Arnold said the price reduction would come from an updated determination that some infrastructure like bridges would not need to be retrofitted.

If Maryland decides to make a pivot to rapid buses, the Red Line project team can still rely on much of the planning and engineering work already completed for the light rail proposal, Tobin said.

Arnold said it also creates an opportunity to simultaneously pursue a Red Line rapid bus line alongside the BMORE Bus plan, a long-term vision to increase service by adding hundreds of new MTA buses.

Dates, times and locations for the four May meetings are:

• Baltimore County: Saturday, May 2, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. at Woodlawn High School
• Downtown Baltimore: Tuesday, May 5, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Baltimore War Memorial
• West Baltimore: Thursday, May 7, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Edmondson-Westside High School
• Southeast Baltimore: Saturday, May 9, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Southeast Anchor Enoch Pratt Library