Budget cuts threaten federal grant to replace aging Baltimore light rail cars

Members of the region’s transit commission had been talking for more than two hours when an advocate asked Maryland Transit Administrator Holly Arnold a question that got everyone’s attention.

“Are we at risk — if the draft CTP [Consolidated Transportation Program budget] goes forward, do we have to give back the federal grant?” asked Brian O’Malley, president of the Central Maryland Transportation Alliance.

Arnold replied, “I think we probably have about a year to get the rest of the funding or we will be at risk of losing” it.

The grant in question is a $213 million award announced by the MTA in February to replace its aging fleet of light rail cars. It was a desperately needed win for the rail line after a two-week shutdown of the system last December. The grant wouldn’t cover the entire cost of replacing the rail cars but provided much-needed assistance for a state short on cash for all of its transportation plans.

The rail cars need replacing, but the draft six-year state transportation budget is about $380 million short of funds to sufficiently upgrade the whole light rail system with new electrical train controls and station modifications to allow new rail cars to run smoothly, Arnold said. State officials could lose the grant funds if they can’t make the necessary improvements.

On any given day, more than half of Baltimore’s 52 light rail cars aren’t available for service because of damage or other maintenance needs.

“We are focusing on our rail car availability — it does fluctuate day by day,” Arnold told the Baltimore Regional Transit Commission on Friday.

The light rail line, which runs from Hunt Valley in Baltimore County to the Glen Burnie and BWI stations in the south, has never gotten fully back on track since safety concerns led to the two-week shutdown last December. Officials blamed a private contractor for a botched and overdue rehabilitation project to provide a “midlife overhaul” for the aging rail cars.

The MTA’s contract with manufacturing giant Alstom for the project had to be extended multiple times. And the renovated rail cars have still only been “conditionally accepted” despite cycling back into service over the past 10 months, according to a new MTA report. Three haven’t even gotten the conditional approval and remain with Alstom at a facility in New York.

Even before the December shutdown, only about half of the fleet was available on any given day in the first nine months of 2023 due to issues such as damaged axels and faulty brakes, according to the MTA’s application for federal money to replace the vehicles.

“MTA cannot adequately meet customers’ service needs for daily reliability and frequency with the existing fleet’s condition,” the agency wrote in its application. “Poor reliability and frequent outages and delays hamper passengers’ timely arrival.”

A history of half measures

The midlife overhaul of rail cars on the 32-year-old light rail line should have started in 2005, but there wasn’t money to do it.

When it finally kicked into gear in 2018, Arnold said, she went to then-state Transportation Secretary Pete Rahn to suggest replacing the rail cars instead of rehabbing the old ones. Such a project is only meant to help the rail cars reach their 30-year expected useful lifespan, not extend it. The rail cars would start to reach the age of 30 in 2022.

But there wasn’t money to do it.

“That has led us to where we are. So we’re in this situation, we need to get out of this situation, and so we’re continuing to make the best decisions with the funding that we have,” Arnold told commissioners Friday.

Delays in improving the condition of rail cars mean that riders sometimes have to compete for room on packed trains after Orioles or Ravens games. They lead to situations such as riders before forced to take a shuttle bus that goes the wrong way, the so-called “shuttle bus from hell,” and to small, one-car trains.

“We believe that the draft budget forces the MTA to run the light rail vehicles until they fail,” O’Malley’s transportation alliance wrote commissioners ahead of Friday’s meeting.

They aren’t alone in voicing concern and urging state leaders to address their budget challenges head on.

“We are concerned that the region will miss out on additional opportunities if we cannot make needed and overdue investments in existing assets,” leaders of the Baltimore Transit Future coalition wrote state Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld last month.

One of those opportunities is locking down federal assistance for the Red Line, a proposed 14-mile-long light rail that is expected to cost anywhere from $3 billion to $7 billion. It would connect East and West Baltimore.

The Federal Transit Administration looks at a local agency’s ability to keep its network in a state of good repair as an evaluation criteria for approving grants to help build new lines. Though Maryland leaders have expressed optimism that they are well-positioned to secure federal funding for the Red Line, the MTA is up against a multibillion-dollar backlog of state of good repair work that is growing.

Inflation and supply chain issues have driven up the projected cost of such projects.

But the agency also isn’t putting as much money into state of good repair as required by Maryland law. In all, the draft six-year budget proposes deferring more than $670 million in work for the MTA. That includes pushing off the replacement of steel track along the Howard Street corridor, where a slew of major redevelopment is ongoing.

Luis Cardona, who represents the business community on the transit commission, worries that potential cuts to Maryland transportation spending could affect more than just light rail service.

“There’s a whole economic development argument that you can make that the deferral of these projects also impedes all that [economic development] on the west side of downtown Baltimore, which is a major, major part of the rehabilitation of this region,” Cardona said.