Streeter: Baltimore deserves better than better-than-nothing transit

Bryan Swann had been excited about the Red Line since he was a student at Digital Harbor High School school in 2013.

“My friends and I would talk about it,” he said of the proposed rail line connecting West Baltimore residents with points east, making it easier for them to access jobs and other opportunities.

But around the time Swann graduated in 2015, then-Gov. Larry Hogan killed the would-be 14-mile rail line, calling it a “wasteful boondoggle,” returning nearly a billion dollars in already-secured federal funding and redistributing state money to road and other projects. That sucked. More than a decade later, Swann’s still waiting for a transit solution. And he’s not holding his breath for a train now that a rapid bus system has been put forward instead.

“If we’re being realistic, what they’re offering with the bus alternative, it’s the inconvenient truth that it’s better than the project just sitting there,” Swann said last week at a Red Line open house put on by the Maryland Transit Administration.

He’s likely right. While I’ve been accused of being a Baltimore cheerleader without nuance, I’m also glad something is happening. But I think we deserve more than just the best we can do. The people of this city need the most efficient transportation possible, and I don’t know if they’re going to get it.

“We need a real transit system,” said Anna Ellis, a Hampden resident and volunteer with the Transform Maryland Transportation Coalition, at the session held at downtown Baltimore’s War Memorial Building. “We don’t have one now.”

MTA’s open houses were to educate citizens on three proposed ways forward for the project spanning from Woodlawn in Baltimore County to East Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center: a full Light Rail Transit (LRT) system; a light rail that would be completed in separate phases; or a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT).

The light rail, according to the website, may cost $5 billion to $9 billion and take about nine to 12 years to complete; phased light rail would start at about $2 billion for the first segment with varying timelines for following phases; and the bus rapid transit would cost between $750 million and $1 billion. Material displayed at the public sessions said that the longer it takes to secure funding and start construction, the more expensive it will be — meaning that the phased approach will likely cost even more than $9 billion when all is said and done.

Most of the folks I interviewed at the open house — a brightly lit presentation of detailed panels explaining the project and its various costs and schedules — preferred the rail version but are expecting to get the rapid bus.

“I’m afraid that’s what we’re going to be stuck with,” Ellis said. “Even the incremental rail line is prohibitively expensive.” She’s not the Red Line’s target audience since she has access to the current light rail, “but everyone should have the same access I do. I sort of feel like the decision has already been made.”

But it’s not a done deal, according to the MTA.

“The agency is considering all options to find an ultimate solution,” said Caitlin Tobin, the agency’s Red Line senior project director, adding that “transparent dialogue” was the point of the sessions.

Panels presented at the open house reiterated that the direction needs to be “realistic, given the state’s current fiscal constraints.” And that makes sense. I am a realist, but I also want the best for the people who need this the most.

I was living in Florida in 2015 when Hogan killed the Red Line train, and remember being heartbroken as a Baltimorean. It felt like a way to suppress Black financial progress, and not for the first time. A proposed 1968 design for an expansive city subway system was abandoned because of the cost and pushback against bringing crime into the surrounding counties. (You know what “crime” means.)

“Transportation investment and disinvestment have been central in Baltimore’s long saga of racial segregation and inequity, and the Red Line was the most recent chapter,” wrote Politico’s Sheryll Cashin in 2020.

That money is gone, and there’s nothing anyone can do to bring it back. The state is laying out what’s possible, and the presentations “have been extremely helpful,” said Michael Scepaniak, president of community advocacy group BaltPOP. He’d been hoping for a tunneled light rail.

“I give the MTA credit for the level set,” getting transportation laypeople, like myself, on the same page with a basic overview of the project, he said. “They don’t control the federal government.”

While I am heartened by Gov. Wes Moore’s efforts to revive the project in any way, I’m realistic about what’s available in the midst of an economic crisis in a state projected to face a $2.3 billion shortfall next year that also lost nearly 25,000 federal jobs in 2025 — more than any other. We need the Red Line in any form, but the train seems faster, more efficient and a way to maximize getting people to those needed opportunities at a time when the federal government seems poised to remove them.

Yes, the bus is better than nothing. I wish we didn’t have to settle for better than nothing.