Baltimore's transportation woes - where is the turn-around?

Maybe it is just the new transportation director's bad luck that as one of her first major activities she has to announce the temporary shut-down of Baltimore Bikeshare. The system's troubled recent melt-down happened under her watch, though, and on the heels of the back and forth about protected bike lanes and the Boston Street corridor study which gives bikes the shaft. The temporary shut-down is just one more "perl" in a long string of Baltimore transportation woes and disappointments that give Baltimore a black eye.

Yesterday's City press release regarding the bike-share, assuring that everything will be fine come the first anniversary of the system in October, is just further proof that the responsible parties still don't understand that not further alienating Baltimore boosters, such as the active transportation activists, requires transparency, openness and collaboration. During the last three months or so, neither the City nor the operators of the private bike-share provided any information, communication, or proper reasoning except for a few tweets here and there. Some tweets even resorted to misrepresentation of facts in spite of a meltdown that unfolded before everybody's eyes. Even with the background info I obtained, I am not sure that advocates, let alone the public, have a complete picture of the situation now.

Nothing to share

Of course, shutting down the still fledgling bike-share system for a month or two is far from being one of the more spectacular transportation failures. That honor goes without competition to the cancellation of the Red Line, a folly which made headlines nationwide. In the group of famous blunders also belong the tunnel fire under Howard Street and the collapse of an entire street into a freight rail-bed. The ultimate responsibility for those calamities was never fully established between City and railroad while the fact that the freight line presents a major bottleneck in the rail dissemination of freight arriving in Baltimore's otherwise thriving port is indisputable. (A now proposed solution is still  not fully funded).

Other troubles are less spectacular but no less concerning: the Circulator's spiral of escalating debt and eroding service, the MTA's Baltimore Link bus system, which few outside the MTA see as a roaring success, and the already noted protected bike lane that City DOT threatened to remove before it was even properly finished. The only constructed urban expressway, the JFX is almost as feared as the cross Bronx Expressway for its antiquated interchanges, treacherous curves and endless crashes have sent vehicles and even police officers flying over the edge but after decades of that, no remedy is in place. Even the water taxi, once prospering with two competing private operators, experienced a Baltimore calamity which arrived when a vessel capsized in a wind-gust, killing five passengers and sinking the operator.

All this in a city from which American passenger railroads once emanated, from which a National Pike spread westward and in which successfully the battles against those urban freeways that destroyed many American cities was won. A city that jumped as only one of four US cities on the bandwagon of modern subways (the others were Washington DC, Atlanta, San Francisco and LA) and was also an early adopter of light rail (along with San Diego, Sacramento, Dallas, Denver, LA and Portland). But unlike those other cities, Baltimore subsequently never expanded the single line systems into a network. Today, both lines, far from instilling pride, rank low in public opinion and suffer from continually shrinking ridership.

Freight, a critical lifeline for Baltimore

To be fair, there are also local successes in the roam of transportation that shine today: The port, the airport, Baltimore's Parking Authority, MARC and Zip-Car, to name a few. The water taxi has big aspirations and is on the path of becoming real viable transit. Those successes should be used to glean some lessons since  some are operated by the same entities that seem to be so inept in operating other modes.

But those successes are too sparse to avoid that Baltimore slips further and further behind if one compares it to some other cities, some of which came much later to the table of innovative transportation. Denver, Portland, San Diego, LA and Dallas all had only a single light rail line when Baltimore completed its own line, but all have a full system with at least three or many more lines today. Cities that had no LRT at all are now running entire successful systems, such as Charlotte, Seattle and Minneapolis, all cities that are not only proud of the light rail but which are also shaping their cities around the expensive rail lines, an effort that the Baltimore region never bothered with, not for Metro and not for LRT. San Francisco has tested dynamic pricing for downtown parking and apps to find open spaces, and most larger cities seem to operate their bike share systems without the troubles plaguing Baltimore. Complete streets policies are common across the nation. New York and neighboring DC managed to reshape their streets within a few years in favor of "active modes.

So, what is the matter, why can't we get it right when it comes to transportation, no matter who runs it and what the mode?

Circulator: Unsustainable routes

Why can't our bus stops and smart phone apps display real time arrival accurately and consistently or why can't the Circulator remain the darling of transit choices it once was? Why can't we do real transit oriented development, not even around Metro stations with oodles of land or around Penn Station where Amtrak owns the land? (For a decade Amtrak is issuing new RFPs for development of the same land over and over again). Why has Baltimore a "complete streets" policy on the book for years but can't point to one single street as a prototype? Why are Baltimore traffic signals still not responding to actual traffic and still fall out of sequence on a regular basis? Why are clear directional wayfinding signs almost entirely absent here or date from a time before the Baltimore Beltway? Why doesn't Baltimore have a real time parking space indication system or even. Why can't Baltimore maintain a functional tour bus route for tourists? Why did Baltimore cede self driving Uber cars to Pittsburgh? Why did Baltimore's transit first introduce and then drop a successful "rapid bus" overlay named Quickbus? Why can't the City decide on long completed traffic studies for St. Paul and Calvert Streets (one way versus two-way) or the closure of the lanes that separate McKledin Plaza from the HarborPlace? Why does it take half a year to let go of rush hour restrictions on curbside parking when it was long decided that this should be done in some places? Why does the Harbor Promenade never gets completed or signed so that one can find all the connections? Why did the just released Boston Street corridor study read like a manual commissioned by Robert Moses instead like a document from 2017?

The light rail line that never came: Red Line, $250 million down the drain

This by no means comprehensive list of questions Baltimore residents ask themselves is way longer than the list of available answers. Anybody will be hard-pressed to find one common denominator for all the ills without resorting to the kind of generalization that isn't helpful in solving problems. There isn't a simple answer and no silver bullet, but lack of resources, lack of quality staff, and leadership are the chief suspects. A lack of resources and funding doesn't explain everything, especially not wasteful expenditures, but a lot flows from it, particularly the difficulty of attracting first rate leadership talent or the unwillingness to take the risk of implementing innovation or to prepare a solid guiding plan such as DC's Move DC.
Given all that a lot of hope is riding on new leadership at BC-DOT. But the director's "message" on top of the agency's website indicates that little change is to be expected:

The Department of Transportation works hard to improve the quality of life for both residents and visitors of our great city. Our primary goal is to have the city’s transportation infrastructure in a state of good repair by striving to provide a transportation network that ensures the mobility of people and enhances economic prosperity.

Through our Capital Improvement Program, we are seeking to enhance bus and rail transit options, construct additional bicycle lanes and make our infrastructure safer for pedestrians, cyclists, and the disabled. Communities throughout the city are enhancedthrough our streetscape, complete streets and capital improvement programs.

DOT remains committed to ‘Keeping Baltimore Moving Safely’ for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists who live, work and visit our great city. BC-DOT website message from Michelle Pourciau, Director.

The broad reach of open questions shows that transportation is no longer a matter that a few engineers can sort out in a back corner of the office, it is no longer a matter of one department or one agency, but it is the confluence of policies, technologies and decisions from many sides. Transportation today, more than ever, determines the fate of an entire city and metro region.

Traffic choking off the Inner Harbor: What happened to the plan?

Turning the tide doesn't require that everything must magically work in perfection or that one can't have any failures. To the contrary, such expectation would stifle risk taking and innovation even further. But turning the tide requires a few solid successes that prove that Baltimore can get good things done. It requires that those responsible get jolted out of an attitude that mediocre is good enough for Baltimore and that nobody cares.

Bikeshare may not be the most important transportation issue, but the forceful public response to the recent blunders proves that many willing to participate and engage care deeply. Baltimore can ill afford to frustrate them over and over again.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA