From an accident perspective yes. I avoid downtown as much as possible these days and drive very defensively. From a crime perspective the car gives you added protection. You’re better off locked in your car than standing alone waiting for public transportation.

Moorhouse Training offers group and private classes. Elizabeth is great! https://www.moorhousetraining.com/

Money is a pretty major factor in a on call 24/7 executive role overseeing a massive budget.

You'd attract stronger talent if it was a more attractive place for people to work. You have to look at factors other than money, otherwise you'll just get people who show up and do the bare minimum for a couple of years.

Cars are occassionally not immaculate, particularly in the winter when there are some homeless riding around just to stay warm. But they're usually cleaner than DC's. The most common annoyance is the amount of people who smoke cigarettes while in the cars.

Stations on the other hand are spotless, and they feature some nice art installations or murals.

I'm not fundamentally opposed to transit and have lived in other cities with better options so I understand the value proposition. My issue is to be financially worth it you'd need to have more ridership than could be realistically served by running frequent bus service to that area and/or a significant decrease in ridership time. For the ridership numbers, the models are generous in terms of projections vs reality to try to get federal funding. The current models for the central MD transit plan were created pre-covid as far as I can tell. There's no reality where they will come anywhere close unless the state of MD bans all car traffic or the remote work trend dies off overnight.

Regarding ridership time, looking at the North/South alternatives, the projected decrease in "transit ridership time" is a max of 14 minutes between Towson & Downtown. The MTA shared in public meetings they already eliminated the heavy rail choice as too expensive/least projected ridership so that 14 minute savings is out. The next best is 11 minutes for partially mixed traffic light rail. The current time to get between Towson Town Center & Light/Pratt on the Red Bus Line is 45 minutes. The best light rail option would bring it down to a projected 34 minutes. This is before traffic studies are done and as we've seen with mixed traffic in the current light rail, I'm skeptical it'll work even that well. To make that same trip in a car is 20 minutes. You're not enticing new ridership with those kinds of numbers. Projected ridership times mentioned can be found on the 3rd row here: https://rtpcorridors.com/images/ns-documents/RTP_North-South_Corridor_Study_MOEs_2022-08-31.pdf

My two cents is the MTA need to take a step back and look at why all their other Baltimore transit lines struggle. Even pre-COVID, the light rail stops are in the middle of nowhere and do not save time due to being in mixed traffic so you get the worst of limited local ridership and limited commuter ridership. Penn Station isn't connected to any of the job centers, so the MARC train doesn't get used as a commuter rail coming from north/northeast of the city. As we're discussing in this thread, the subway has it's own problems with ridership.

In light of the uncertainty around what the working landscape looks now and into the future, IMO it'd be best to focus on testing options like BRT in the most dense city bus lines before taking on prestige projects. Prove out line concepts in the lowest cost & flexible option before taking on major investments based off faulty modeling. Expand those line out to further & less dense areas on the edge of the city as they start working in the core. If the goal is to look at suburban access to the city core to get cars off the road, they should be looking at commuter rail lines such as the MARC which go further out and have limited stops but actually connect them to downtown. The current north/south transit plan looks like more of the same mixed traffic light rail setup that hasn't worked.

With all due respect this is inaccurate. Patterson Perk torpedoed their business during Covid when they enacted what felt like the most extreme and unnecessary protocols in all of Baltimore city.

Driving is actually much more dangerous, especially as people have been speeding more and more.

Pet-u-cation; https://www.petucationtraining.com/; they offer discounts for rescue dogs.

It's not so much that Baltimore has such a large percentage of public employees, but rather that so much of our subway's pre-pandemic usage was specifically about commuting, whether to Hopkins or Charles Center or State Center or Owings Mills.

The thing about DC or Chicago or NYC is that the subway's something you take to get around the city that also takes you to work. Ours was only ever really built for the second part, and without that you're basically left with a train that connects Lexington Market to parts of East and NW Baltimore.

I dunno anything about Cleveland’s system but based on my (admittedly limited) knowledge of the system in Baltimore, it’s not even directly connected to Penn Station. Like, I get frustrated with the fact that Union Station in DC is only on the Red Line but I can at least expect to be in Union Station when I get off the train. Every time I’m in Baltimore, there doesn’t feel like a good reason to even casually use the subway compared to even the light rail. When driving, walking or taking the bus will be more efficient for what I need.

Isn't this all about how term limits don't allow you to qualify for the pension anymore, or something like that?

I’ve lived here almost my entire life, and minus a couple times going to DC, I’ve never used the metro. And I don’t know anyone my age who has either. (I’m 22 for context)

I am not talking about the performance of an individual. You keep talking about if they have earned their pay. I would argue they in fact have not. But you seem to think getting rid of them and offering to pay a new person less is something that will improve our ability to hire more competent leadership, which I find fascinating.

Hmm that’s strange. I’ve only ridden the subway a few times and all within the last year just for fun - but the one thing it had going for it was that the station and cars were both immaculate. Of course, that was largely because so few people were riding lol…

Yes, I understand that. My point is that talking about government employees seems odd given that I can’t imagine other cities like NY and Chicago don’t have similar numbers of public employment, and that DC is probably leagues ahead of us in that realm. I don’t think that’s why the subway here is dying

I'd argue we need to distribute the money to actually fixing the school buildings and hiring more teachers first, before we can even begin thinking about paying administrators at the same rate or more.

Do you think the administrators have earned their pay? I don't.

DC has a subway system, Baltimore has a subway line. I feel like most of the people who can't understand the difference have never really used the Baltimore subway--which is great for what it is, but also goes to very few places most people need to get to.

Unfortunately this is what happens when cities build commuter lines disguised as a subway. Nobody uses that thing for anything other than commuting, which nowadays there is much less of.

Do you think we'll attract stronger talent if we pay that position less?

DC likely has more remote workers than we do though

So you think we'll attract stronger talent if we pay less for the position?

At this point I feel like a state-lead or even federal-lead initiative to restructure Baltimore’s government is necessary. There’s too many cockroaches engrained in the system for any meaningful change to happen by just electing one or two actually well-meaning people every few years

https://www.facebook.com/sobodogsinneed

Brian is amazing with dogs. I worked a lot with him when he was working at BARCS.

Not everyone has a car, so that option isn't available to everyone. I think what the above poster was saying is that for people who take Metro, it's pretty easy to get to Harbor East on foot. But also, perhaps there are fewer people taking any mass transit to Harbor East because they may now live in the area.