Renewed plans for the Red Line will focus on light rail trains as the mode of transportation for an east-west transit line across Baltimore, Gov. Wes Moore said Thursday.
Maryland officials had been considering light rail among a few other options — primarily buses — for the public transit project since Moore announced he would resurrect the plan last June. The Red Line was originally planned and partially funded before Republican former Gov. Larry Hogan shut it down when he entered office in 2015, returning $900 million in federal funding for the project.
“We are proud to announce the Red Line will bring light rail to Baltimore!” Moore wrote in a social media post Thursday night ahead of an official announcement scheduled for Friday.
Other highly anticipated details like the route — three of which are in consideration — or the costs are not expected to be revealed Friday, though the news conference will take place at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center Campus, roughly where the original route was planned to have its most easternmost station.
Officials spent the last year pouring over technical analyses and soliciting public comments about how the Red Line should be resurrected. Landing on light rail, they ended up picking the more expensive option to construct at a time when the state’s budget — and in its transportation budget in particular — are facing vast shortfalls. Maryland leaders are seeking federal funding for much of the plan but some state lawmakers have cautioned that it will also put a stress on the state budget. State officials said they plan to apply for a capital investment grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
“The lack of this type of investment in transit has been a denial of credible economic mobility for so many people in this city,” State Del. Mark Edelson, who represents East Baltimore including Bayview, said. “There are also a lot of young families and young professionals that want to live in a city that has urban improvements like light rail.”
Light rail will attract nearly double the number of daily trips as buses, according to analysis conducted using Federal Transit Administration data late last year.
Along one of the proposed routes, which is similar to the original 2015 proposal, light rail was expected to attract 33,000 to 35,000 daily trips compared to 17,500 to 24,000 daily trips for buses.
That same route would take nine to 12 years to construct and cost $5.9 billion to $7.2 billion for light rail versus $4.1 billion to $5.7 billion for buses, according to the analysis. For both options, it would take 44 to 48 minutes to travel the entire route with an annual capital cost per trip of $21 to $26.
Transportation officials have said since last year that light rail was a strong preference among the public. And groups like the Baltimore Transit Equity Coalition implored the governor to choose light rail, saying in a letter to him earlier this year that it was a better return on investment and would mean faster travel times, “greater autonomy and accessibility for disabled transit riders,” and increase property values.
“History shows that ‘development follows rail’ and we insist on nothing less than light rail transit,” the group wrote.
Moore, in his post Thursday, said, “We listened to communities, stakeholders, and leaders across the state — they were clear, this is what they wanted.”
Construction is still a ways off. A decision on which route to choose is expected by the end of the year and preliminary design and engineering work could take up to two years beyond that, according to the governor’s office. State officials will have to decide on tunnels or surface-level tracks as they map a route across the city.
The first proposed map, which is similar to the 2015 proposal nixed by former Gov. Larry Hogan, would construct a tunnel between Woodlawn in Baltimore County and the Westside Skill Center in Edmondson Village in West Baltimore. The route would also construct a tunnel between Harlem Park and Canton that passes under downtown, Harbor East and Fells Point. The other two routes are all surface-level tracks, and planners still have to decide how trains will progress from Canton to Bayview, either along the waterfront or through Highlandtown.
“The decision by Larry Hogan to kill the Redline and return federal funds set Baltimore and all of Maryland back immeasurably,” City Councilor Zeke Cohen, who represents parts of East Baltimore, said. “His decision to invest in light rail demonstrates his understanding of the worth and dignity of people that rely on public transportation to get to work, and children to get to school.”
Baltimore Transit Equity Coalition President Sam Jordan, who said the coalition formed hours after Hogan’s decision to nix the plan in June 2015, said city streets aren’t wide enough to accommodate two-way trains and there is an opportunity to extend the light-rail route beyond Bayview to jobs in Sparrow’s Point.
“We see a chance for a light rail transit spur from Bayview to Sparrow’s Point,” Jordan said. “The corridor of Essex, Dundalk, Turner’s Station and Sparrow’s Point through Trade Point Atlantic has become a burst of development.”
Jordan also said the designs for the replacement of the Francis Scott Key Bridge should contain both car lanes and light rail tracks similar to the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia.
“You don’t get but one chance in a century to redesign a bridge. We would be remiss to not include both means of transit,” Jordan said.
The original Red Line had a $2.9 billion price tag and the state spent $300 million on its planning process before Hogan canceled it, calling it a “wasteful boondoggle” in the process. The Republican former governor, who is now his party’s nominee for U.S. Senate in Maryland, gave up $900 million in pledged federal funding and redirected $736 million in state money to road projects primarily in suburban, largely white areas.
Any state funding could be an issue again under Moore as he and other Democrats face multi-billion-dollar budget deficits in the state’s general fund and long-term transportation budget. Lawmakers made some inroads in the 2024 Maryland General Assembly session earlier this year. But some Democrats who sought to go further by increasing tolls or other taxes had warned that kicking the can down the road could jeopardize major projects like the Red Line.
