City Council wanted oversight of the transportation department. Results are mixed.

Over the course of four hearings last year, Baltimore City Council members probed city transportation department staff on three issues — parking enforcement, street lighting and community engagement — in an effort to help the long-beleaguered agency.

The meetings were cordial, comprehensive, detailed. Councilmembers and transportation staff thanked one another for their dedication and work, while acknowledging disarray and dysfunction.

But now it’s 2026 and some councilmembers appear to have less patience after seeing few results.

“While I’m encouraged by the progress made to date and grateful for the collaboration across branches [of government], I remain frustrated by the lack of progress or, in some cases, the failure to recognize that progress is still needed,” City Council President Zeke Cohen said in council chambers Thursday.

It was the Land Use and Transportation Committee’s first oversight hearing of the year. Committee Chair Ryan Dorsey has committed the panel to figuring out what isn’t working at the Baltimore City Department of Transportation and how to fix it.

Thursday’s agenda: the same three topics as last year, partly because deadlines came and went without being met. This time, Dorsey and Cohen made their requests more pointedly, returning to a theme of stewardship of taxpayer dollars.

“Baltimoreans expect us to work together to solve their problems,” Cohen said.

The department has made strides.

Parking citations are up since the department moved to 24/7 enforcement operations last year, Transportation Director Veronica McBeth said. It also made it easier for residents to submit 311 requests. And the department began using license plate readers within seven residential parking permit zones to check vehicles for the proper permits as it looks to use technology to improve operations, she added.

For streetlights, the agency partnered with the Mayor’s Office for Performance and Innovation to use mapping technology to identify those in need of maintenance. As far as community engagement goes, the department made more use of the Streets of Baltimore website, where residents can track project progress and information.

“It is clear our staff has worked hard to address the issues raised by this body,” McBeth said.

But, she added, much of the work has become “constantly putting out proverbial fires, which often limits our ability to be proactive.”

That frustrated councilmembers.

There’s a backlog of thousands of parking-related 311 requests, roughly half for abandoned vehicles, Cohen said. Dorsey highlighted recent citation data from a stretch of Charles Street that showed just six tickets written in January for cars blocking bus stops or a peak hour bus lane despite constant community complaints about illegally parked cars.

Agency staff said the transportation department and mayor’s office plan to visit Pittsburgh in April to study how it enforces parking laws. When council asked how much that would cost, and why Pittsburgh over other peer cities, it got few answers.

Updated — but incomplete — data suggests about 2,000 city streetlights are knocked down, but there are only a handful of poles in stock to replace them.

The transportation department also has not signed a formal maintenance contract with Baltimore Gas and Electric, which has historically had a “handshake agreement” for maintenance of nearly 90% of streetlights. McBeth said it sent a draft contract to BGE months ago but the utility has yet to respond.

“Every day that we continue our relationship in this current status with BGE is a day that we are actively participating in violating the city charter,” which requires a Board of Estimates-approved contract with any vendor for work, Dorsey said.

Although BGE subcontractors are doing most of the maintenance, Dorsey added, the city is responsible for keeping streets lit and safe. He and Cohen asked agency staff to explore other companies that could perform the work if BGE isn’t willing to come to the table.

Last year, committee members asked McBeth’s team to create standard operating procedures and guidelines for community engagement after complaints from some neighborhoods that residents weren’t informed about road projects.

However, those procedures came seven months later than councilmembers requested them and they were missing key elements required by city code. McBeth’s team is working on another draft that was promised to the committee in two weeks.

“We have to hit deadlines,” Cohen said.