The Forever Shrinking Baltimore Red Line

24 years after planning began for the Baltimore Red Line,  11 Years after then Governor Hogan killed the fully designed and funded $3bn  Red Line transit project and three years after Governor Moore resurrected it with great fanfare restarting the engineering and design to address what has changed in eight years (a small bit of the eastern right of way had been sold to townhome developers near Greektown, the population had shrunk further) I found myself once again in a Red Line Open House at Edmondson High. 

The Red Line will be a high-frequency, high-capacity light rail line for the Baltimore Region, and will be an investment in residents’ access to jobs, education, services, and opportunities.(Official Website)

The current series of Open Houses is the great reckoning. There is no money, what should we do? The public is being asked: Try to stay the course and aim for the full big project, build a small first phase of it as light rail from Edmondson Village to Marketplace on Pratt Street, or build the whole thing as bus rapid transit (BRT)?  In MTA speak this sounds like this:

The Red Line open houses will engage the public in open conversations on ways to continue to advance the project, while recognizing current federal realities and state headwinds. Discussions will include presenting the results of the light rail alternatives analysis, exploring new delivery strategies and reimagining the recommended mode of service that will maintain a realistic path forward to deliver improved regional mobility. Topics discussed will also include the financial considerations for three options:

 

• Proceeding with the full 14-mile light rail project
• Phasing the light rail project by splitting it into smaller portions over time
• Revisiting bus rapid transit
  

Except for the first (fictional) option, none of this represented the study results of all the previous engineering work. The original plans didn't have an alignment on Pratt Street, they had rejected surface options for light rail through downtown because of the space constraints there. Even the second Red Line study had considered BRT as not competitive because it didn't have enough capacity (buses hold fewer riders than trains) and it cost more to operate smaller vehicles (more drivers, the biggest operational cost), plus buses don't last as long as trains, let alone, that they are not known to attract development in the same way as rail.

From the MTA exhibits

But with $950 million federal dollars gone for good (at least under the current government) and State and local governments struggling with structural deficits, money talks, not engineering. 

Even the "cheap" BRT option is estimated to cost anywhere between $750 million to $1bn, money that is in no budget.

So the gathering at Edmondson High (one of five current open houses) was less projecting a bright transit future and felt more like a memorial service with a re-union of many old Red Line consultants, advocates and community organizers which came together to see the project's demise, irrespective of the outreach consultants', current planners' and engineers' and the new young MTA planning staff's chirpy demeanor. As if a truly astonishing new transit future would be on display on the many boards in the cafeteria and the fairly numerous guests would still be in awe of what is in store. 

But transit in Baltimore is not entirely bleak. MTA is still full of plans.

•  There is the Baltimore Raise plan, addressing the same east-west corridor as the Red Line and funded with $50m to enhance the already existing Quickbus 40 traveling the corridor as a bus with fewer stops for accelerated service. Raise pays for more dedicated bus lanes, accessibility of bus stops, better bus stops and signal priority.

  

  From the MTA exhibits

  
  

The Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) Transit Priority Project – or RAISE Project for short – is a collaborative effort between the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) and Baltimore City Department of Transportation (BCDOT) with the assistance of other agencies such as the State Highway Administration ( SHA), and Baltimore County. The RAISE Project proposes enhancements to the CityLink Blue and CityLink Orange lines to provide faster, more reliable transit and improved pedestrian safety along the 20-mile corridor extending from the Western terminus of CMS in Baltimore County through Baltimore City and ending at the Eastern Terminus of Fox Ridge in Baltimore County.

•  There is the $400m exchange of the subway trains which is in full swing and will be completed in 2027. 
• There is the planned and funded Baltimore Light Rail Modernization Plan which also requires a full rebuild of the stations supposed to be complete in 2035. 
• There is the Bmore Bus program which adds a fifth bus division so that more buses can be dispatched and provided overall more reliable bus service. So far $25 million are funded for purchase of land and design of the bus facility.
• There is State guaranteed minimum funding for the the State of Good Repairs, with a recently published ten year capital needs assessment

The legislature passed a bill this year that gives Baltimore a stronger say in what MTA does.

Unfortunately, none of the plans recognize technology progress in the quarter century since the year 2000 Baltimore Rail plan when the Red Line was identified as the highest priority. Increasing electrification and automation have changed the transportation future. Automated "robo-taxis" ply the streets of Atlanta, San Francisco and many other cities, electric buses are the only buses circulating in some large Chinese Cities, fully automatic articulated "galley" trains replaced old style subway cars separated by doors and bridges and increasingly transit agencies consider "on-demand" services where ridership isn't strong enough for fixed schedule service. Baltimore not hasn't seen any of that, it doesn't even plan for it.

The envisioned BRT system on display at Edmondson High is still simply showing articulated "bendy" buses as Los Angeles introduced them 24 years ago.  Meanwhile several Chinese Cities already are already serviced by trackless trolleys,

double articulated low-floor trains, fully automated, and run on batteries instead of overhead wires. These trackless vehicles that look like the most modern light rail trains run on rubber tires and street asphalt, guided by white lines or embedded sensors and, thanks to stabilizers, ride also as smoothly as modern light rail trains. 

It is fairly predictable that this convergence technology of bus and rail will be the future of urban surface transit and finally overcome  the competition between rail and bus. 

So far these vehicles cannot be bought here and wouldn't comply with the Buy-American rules, but in some time they will certainly also be manufactured or assembled here, just as light rail cars are now, a product that the US had once stopped to make. 

Given the reality of funding,  one can foresee that MTA will fold B-more Bus and the BRT option of the Red Line into a single package since the enhanced QB-40 and the depicted BRT are essentially identical.  "Real" BRT, however, would include double articulated buses, ideally with doors on both sides, for center running alignments and center platform stations (Istanbul, Mexico City, Bogota), elevated platforms for level boarding (Atlanta, Denver) and fully rebuilt exclusive lanes with smooth and stable pavement for a more comfortable ride.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

The author was a consultant on the Red Line from 2002-2015

See also the related recent article on this blog: https://communityarchitectdaily.blogspot.com/2026/03/baltimore-transit-prudent-pragmatism-or.html