> EDIT: although I think you have to go underground and not elevated for Edmondson Ave west of the MARC station, so I forgot about that

My opinion has always been that the Highway to Nowhere portion should be used for a Cut and Cover 'transit hub' station near the Marc Station, then use a TIF to attract a National Chain grocery store there.

After that, underground until you hit the service road in Leakin Park and Franklintown Road, then you can run a surface Train to the 70 terminus/SS Admin. It cuts off the southern portion of Leakin and divides wildlife which is unfortunate, but if that's the cost compromise it takes for useful mass transit I think it's worth it.

Ideally it would remain underground through the Village and then turn North to the SS Admin.

And it has to stop at red lights. Wtf

It’s funny, so few people people have any reason to use it, but once somebody does they are immediately like “oh yeah, that whipped, we should build more heavy rail”

> if the light rail was given priority over traffic lights

Exactly correct.

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It's a breath of fresh air to see a city agency being both responsive and professional. Thanks for the efforts.

You’re right! Then, once you’re gotten to the old Norfolk Southern Right of Way, you don’t have to do this really complex portal construction operation like they were gonna end up doing to divert traffic

EDIT: although I think you have to go underground and not elevated for Edmondson Ave west of the MARC station, so I forgot about that

So basically the old trolley system Baltimore had ages ago?

Which I would all be for by the way.

Good start for Bates. Showing a clear distinction between him and Mosby. He's not going to go after frivolous lawsuits against the police and focus on actual abuses of power and hopefully real violent criminals.

I know we have all been burned in the past with politician promises but I am really rooting for Bates to turn this ship around.

"Look what we built, See no one uses it."

I use the Green Line almost every day and it's pretty great 90% of the time. The light rail is a snail of a train that's main purpose is to bus people from Hereford down to sports.

By going down Boston Street it's bypassing one of the densest (and car centric) neighborhoods in the city. It should be under Canton to put it closer to homes and businesses, which would also knock off 2/3s of a mile of track length and 120­° degrees of turns from the alignment. Keep it out of Canton County Crossing, and take it straight to Bayview/Yard 56, Add a spur to the Clinton Street Pier at a later time (after the Green Line to Morgan State Extension has been built).

People on this sub tend to be too new to Baltimore and uniformed about the original project, the narrative is that Canton killed the red line because they didn't want it, even though the Canton Community Associations' arguments against it were always that it shouldn't be LRT with shared RoW in Boston Street, they wanted it underground with a stop in O'Donnell Square.

But the state of the system has a lot to do with the forced alignment and local funding building it on the cheap to get it done over opposition from all of the idiots that are now using the half-ass product they forced as the excuse to not build more. It's a tried and true NIMBY advocacy tactic: water something down until even advocates can't defend it, then point to it as a failure and the reason we shouldn't have more.

If the Red Line is built in such a way that I have to see daylight between Mondawmin and Canton Crossing, somebody done fucked up

That is absolutely correct, I am just trying to counter the narrative that light rail means some big ugly train is barreling down on your neighborhood and making it an unpleasant place.

> major stretches go through some of the least densely populated parts of the metro.

It was planned to go through Towson originally, Towson pushed back on it. And honestly, with the state of the light rail now, I don't blame them. We just rehabbed the cars and now we won't even have low floored cars until at least 2050

Major Transit projects shouldn't be undertaken in a half step. The Red Line as Light Rail Transit in a shared Right of Way for 4.2 Billion vs a true subway for 5.5 Billion is a no brainer. (Also that 4.2 billion is going to get blown out of the water 15 years after it's built once the prior rights for utility relocations have been worked out in court)

Honestly, as someone who crosses the light rail tracks on foot daily...

Miss me with these mud puddles

I also prefer heavy rail, but the comparison is apples-and-oranges for the surface segments.

The dense grid with equally important perpendicular streets downtown were bypasses by the tunnel.

This is in contrast to the Edmondson Avenue and Boston Street median right-of-way.

Those are both at the top of the road hierarchy and the trains can be given signal priority.

Unfortunately you do still have to deal with drivers crossing and getting stuck in the path. But you get time back from not having to enter and exit a deep underground station

EDIT: However you should know that Heavy Rail has not yet been ruled out by the MTA.

They are likely not going to try to serve CMS anymore, which means they would save a mile long tunnel under cooks lane. If you do heavy rail, then you use the existing subway tunnel instead of digging a new one and again have a couple billion more to play with

Did you read what we wrote?

It’s a pilot project.

Once the pilot project is done, we’ll be analyzing the results and instituting it more throughout the city.

The biggest problem with The Light Rail imo is not that the cars are fucking massive and outdated nor that the track beds aren’t grass lined, those are small things on the periphery that have minimal impact on the function.

The biggest problem is that it doesn’t have its own, separated Right of Way while in the densest part of the city. They were trying to get it done quick and dirty.

Edit: clarity

All this transportation porn in the morning. Whew!

The Red Line shouldn't be light rail sharing right of way, the fact that that is even on the table is ridiculous. It's the East-West corridor of our transit system, It will be The Light Rail 2.0 if it's not grade separated heavy rail with a shared station to the Green Line.

I'm aware of this but no one cares about that. Since then I have seen scooters completely blocking the sidewalk. Want an example? Boston St by the Starbucks.

I've used scooters before and the one I was on had me take a picture in the app of where I left it and it wouldn't end the trip until I left it in a suitable spot which I did.

That's what I'm saying.

Again, I'm not anti-scooter but I am anti stupidity.

Schaefer bought these huge ones for a reason I’m not entirely clear on, but they’re going to be retired for smaller ones

It’s an alright regional train and an alright streetcar, the problem is that it’s a streetcar in the middle

The ones in San Diego and Los Angeles are fairly low profile.