Is Downtown Baltimore doomed?

Standing in Federal Hill Park on a sunny spring day, downtown Baltimore looks as scenic as always:  The peaks of glass, brick and stone towers form a gleaming skyline, mirrored in the waters of the Inner Harbor and its boats in the foreground: An iconic image of Baltimore that is known around the world.

Picture perfect: Downtown Baltimore 

Downtown is in serious trouble

But on the ground, the impressions change and the moldy scent of decay and abandonment isn't any longer limited to Baltimore's once gleaming retail district on Lexington Street but wafts far into the financial district and beyond all the way to Harborplace. 

What if vacancies won't magically disappear at the end of the pandemic when the heavy toll of hotel, restaurant, office and retail closures or restrictions will be lifted, and everything that defines downtown can breathe again? In fact, downtown is being clobbered by a multitude of factors:

• people being tired of focusing on downtown instead of neighborhoods 
• the ongoing loss of corporate headquarters 
• the steady decline of retail 
• violent crime has now penetrated the previously safe central business district
• COVID with everything at once: work from home, restrict or close restaurants and attractions

The barrage on downtown comes when Baltimoreans are fed up by Police misdeeds and singularly focused on equity,  with attention centered on neighborhoods which lacked investment for some time, not downtown. The sense of of a division between downtown and the rest of the City even found its way into a business paper, traditionally a downtown booster: Melody Simmons of the BBJ says in a recent article of the series "the future of cities":

The lopsided focus of developing and maintaining a work, live and play vibe on the city’s waterfront has usurped energy and investment from outlier communities and left an infamous and visible divide (BBJ) 

The past responses to retail and office vacancies may not work any longer

The pandemic makes it very clear that Baltimore never had a cogent answer to the slow erosion of retail and office and the geographic shifts in our post-industrial city that moved the center of activities towards the water and ever further east, other than pumping more residents downtown. To be sure, that is a good strategy, but ultimately not sufficient as we will discuss in this article.  

the moldy scent of decay and abandonment isn't any longer limited
to Baltimore's once gleaming retail district  (Photo: Philipsen)

Baltimore never successfully replaced the lost retail hub of Market Center with a new shopping area. Neither were there consistent, coordinated ongoing, strategic efforts of placing regional corporate headquarters inside the City. Corporations that did locate in the City did so because their employees demanded urbanity, not because there was a consistent policy. With the unabated series of buy-outs and mergers, headquarters may well be a lost cause.

Scattered attempts of establishing shopping on Pratt Street (Best Buy, Filene's Basement) failed and even Harbor East's streets never became true urban shopping destinations. For City shopping, residents drive to the suburban style Canton Crossing. 

The Baltimore Business Journal recently compiled a list of office vacancies and ruminated ominously about companies considering moving or reducing their downtown presence. The paper writes:

Transamerica's order to its 550 workers to clear out their desks by Feb. 28 posed the latest ripple in the downtown market. The move left in limbo 125,109 square feet of space at 100 Light St. in a marquee property near Harborplace. It also followed an announcement by T. Rowe Price in December that it planned to vacate 450,000 square feet at 100 E. Pratt in 2024 for a building yet-to-break-ground in Harbor Point. (BBJ)

The BBJ then notes several other companies which are "probing whether to downsize or relocate in the coming year or so", including Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Pandora. 

There can be no doubt, that the very American way of shaping a city with tall financial office towers huddling in downtown surrounded by low level density has come to an end, not only in Baltimore. The decline of downtown began when department stores and retail empires decamped in favor of suburban malls. When small mom and pop stores first became the victims first of departments stores, then of malls and finally online purchases. The ongoing consolidation and merger of corporations made the departure of corporate headquarters inevitable for many cities not running in the A league except when they positioned themselves as tax heavens such Charlotte, NC or Wilmington, Del.  

A tall crowded downtown surrounded by low level neighborhoods
(Photo: Philipsen)

But right before COVID downtown seemed to be on the mend with trendy  restaurants, downtown living and millennials opting for urbanity.

But the sudden reality of the long discussed "remote office" has made the question what defines downtown urgent again, not only in Baltimore, but all across America and even overseas. 

For example, booming San Francisco, which just had completed an entire new set of downtown towers around the "Salesforce" transit center, named after a company that serves the flourishing online services, was shaken at its core when Salesforce announced it would not lease  325,000 sqft in the yet to be built parcel F of the new Transbay neighborhood. Half  of Salesforce's workforce would continue to work from home, the company announced.

Can downtown be just another neighborhood?

Baltimore's downtown's success story is that "tract 401" has become "Baltimore's fastest growing neighborhood", recognized as such at least since 2012. With the One and 412 Light Street glass towers, and the repurposed historic NationsBank building, the downtown skyline now includes residences and is no longer the domain of banks and corporations. But all the residents that moved into high-rises or one of the apartments carved out from old class B office buildings, garment factories, or even churches, have not been able to support retail or fill the sidewalks sufficiently for coffee shops to remain open, not even before COVID. The streets became entirely deserted as soon as  office workers stayed at home in the pandemic, a clear sign that downtown remains highly dependent on the office worker. 

The remedy of converting offices to apartments will become harder and harder to realize. The transformation of vintage office icons such as the NationsBank Building, the old BGE headquarters, the Standard Oil or the Munsey Building into apartment buildings wasn't easy but proved successful and may be simple compared to the challenge of finding an appropriate future for the much more recent and numerous generation of office towers. 

Downtown residents (Photo Amy Davis, SUN)

These buildings either have floor plates that are too large for residences (which need to be strung along windowed facades for light and ventilation) or their lower floors may be crowded against busy streets with little daylight or sun. There is also this: Many of these buildings are plain ugly with their cold and uninviting imitation modernist architecture, which is  not readily suitable for residential use without a drastic makeover. Practical issues include badly insulated, fixed, sometimes tinted, glass curtain walls and lack of nearby green spaces. Baltimore has begun to tackle those conversions with the Baltimore Harbor hotel south tower and the former PNC tower, both on Baltimore Street. But is there sufficient demand for more downtown living? Is an entirely residential downtown which is sprinkled with a few restaurants and shops really still a "downtown"? 

Downtown as a "Third Place"

In his latest commentary in a March edition of the BBJ, former Baltimore Development Corporation CEO and architect Jay Brodie mused about the question of downtown. Aside from describing downtown still in terms of Petula Clark's 1964 song "Downtown" and giving friendly nods to the urban renewal he accompanied in leading roles for 50 years or so, he brings up an important point when he defines downtown as our "shared neighborhood". This term is similar to the notion of downtown as a city's "living room" or a "third place" (urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg) or the "commons". Architects also love to talk about the "public realm".

It is precisely in these categories where Baltimore's downtown and waterfront long had deficiencies that would become even more noticeable if  downtown would become just another residential neighborhood with tall buildings. 

Mount Vernon's Washington Square (Photo: Philipsen)

The pandemic has highlighted a concern that sociologists have had for a long time about the condition of the shared space in America's cities. The book and research titles of  "Bowling Alone", the "Tragedy of the Commons", the Tragedy of the "Privatization of the Commons" or Henry Lefevbre's “The Right to the City” highlight the concerns. 

As noted, in spite of the waterfront promenade, lovely parks and great historic architecture, Baltimore is not well positioned when it comes to attractive "third places" or "commons". What the British urbanist Peter Hall called "the Rousification of America" in a chapter heading describing "the city of enterprise", Hall takes issue with making the US city a "stage" for entertainment, mostly trough undertakings by private companies, such as the Rouse Company at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. Hall and I both grew up with the European city for comparison.

To answer what a public "third place" could mean, let's take a quick look overseas: Many European and some Canadian and South American cities never segregated downtown quite as much from the rest of the city fabric, didn't create separate financial districts or put all their cultural institutions into a "cultural district".  Even the old segregation of uses through zoning has been less stringent there. My hometown of Stuttgart, for example, about the same size as Baltimore, also experiences failing retail, failing department stores and a reduction of office demand, but that isn't all there is. 

Smack in the heart of downtown Stuttgart are two historic castles, several churches, museums and a very large central park which culminates in a giant formal square in front of  the newer of the two castles. The square is the go-to place for events, demonstrations and urban people-watching, even during a pandemic. Car traffic has long been eliminated from the area, there is a tramway hub located underneath the square and city hall, the main train station and the urban university campus  are only one or two blocks away.  This particular heart of downtown can also be a stage, but it is a public stage, under public control, it consists of many layers of history and is not simply the expression of one fad of urban development  such as the private "Festival Marketplace" that was invented in Boston and Baltimore, has since failed so many cities and still dominates HarborPlace.

The combination of history and many different uses will be resilient enough to survive the pandemic, the decline of retail, and the decline of the office. The "third places" in Stuttgart are "shared" by and attractive to everyone in the city, the region or the nation.  For any real downtown, those "third spaces" are urgently needed, just as Brodie, Oldenburg or the Project  for Public Places (PPP) organization point out.

Center Plaza: Not Bryant Park (Photo Philipsen)

Why Baltimore's "commons" have a hard time

Let's see why Baltimore doesn't fare so well in that category: Instead of Times Square (New York), the Mall (DC), the Commons (Boston), Independence Hall Park (Philadelphia) Embarcadero Plaza (San Francisco), Charm City has a series of spaces that could be some sort of commons, but none of them is clearly the most important one. 

Spaces that come to mind include the historic square in Mt Vernon (Washington Square), City Hall Plaza, (those two a result of the City Beautiful movement), Harborplace and, yes, Center and Hopkins Plazas (all the result of urban renewal).  Such multitude could be an asset but is a liability if it creates uncertainty and vagueness about where the heart of this city really beats and if no space is really suitable as the dominant space. This absence of an indisputable heart facilitates the common refrain to better forget downtown and focus on "the neighborhoods", instead. By contrast, many of Baltimore's neighborhoods have a heart, frequently in the form of a commercial spine, one would recognize as a local "main street". Downtown, by contrast, has, unlike other big cities, no identifiable "main street" anymore.

Washington Square is seen by many as a very high quality public square that could easily be in Paris. Yet, it has suffered from the shift of the center of gravity to the south and the east and the City. After being a strong promoter of the square, the Downtown Partnership did help in making this heart beat less forcefully by taking the Book Festival and First Thursday events away from there and making Charles Street an artery for commuter traffic out of town. 

Then there is the Plaza between City Hall and the War Memorial Building, the subject of repeated re-design that  has done nothing to make this a go-to space except for demonstrations against City Hall. The lack of pulse comes from loveless  adjacent City administration buildings such as 417 Fayette Street and the Police headquarters as much as the many dull garages, freeway elements and surface parking lots one has to pass in order to get to this plaza. Most of the time the space is simply deserted. Now that the redevelopment of Old Town is an actual project, the gulf between Jonestown and City Hall in shape of the JFX is a looming problem to be solved.

Center Plaza and Hopkins Plaza (once the locale of the City Fair) had also various redos even enlisting the help of PPP, but unlike Bryant Park in Manhattan, neither space is a serious candidate for being our "central commons", as long as there are no active first uses surrounding them. The decades of dereliction at the site of the Mechanic Theatre radiates neglect, not a beating heart.

The beginning of a "commons" at HarborPlace (Photo: Philipsen)

That leaves HarborPlace, once well respected and now deeply troubled because of the neglect by the owner of the pavilions, Ashkenazy, now in receivership. Ever since the Rouse company conceived of the two "market" sheds as the ideal way of defining the reclaimed waterfront, these commons were privatized, which ultimately became their downfall. The same applies to any of the "piers" that could become "third places", including Pier 5/6 where the failed Columbus Center takes up valuable space and where the  prime spots are taken up by a steakhouse and a mostly empty concert tent. Imagine what an attractive waterfront park these areas could make if the uses were fully public and open to all! 

Heart surgery needed

Aside from finding new uses in old downtown shells, and adding "program" to oldretail areas (such as the "Bromo" arts district designation) finding, defining and reinforcing and enforcing the actual "heart of the city" will be one of the central strategic moves that need to be tackled to give Baltimore's downtown a future and a "commons" for all City residents and those of the entire region. 

ASG rendering showing a connected McKeldin Plaza for a stronger
"public realm" (ASG Architects)

Given the ongoing geographic shifts of shops, restaurants and offices, HarborPlace plus Rash Field,  plus all the piers may seems to have the biggest potential for truly becoming Baltimore's "commons".  A great city shouldn't be afraid of creating a big commons.

For this to happen, Baltimore would need to take possession of the pavilions, demolish at least one of them, and reclaim much of the surrounding street pavement for pedestrians. 

The goal would be a large, contiguous public space (connected to the McKeldin Plaza) surrounded by a mix of vibrant private, public and institutional activities and easily accessible from several neighborhoods.  

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

See related previous articles on this blog:

https://communityarchitectdaily.blogspot.com/2020/03/market-center-quality-of-public-realm.html

https://communityarchitectdaily.blogspot.com/2019/10/spooky-at-harborplace.html

https://communityarchitectdaily.blogspot.com/2019/06/why-tearing-down-harborplace-is-good.html

https://communityarchitectdaily.blogspot.com/2019/01/shopping-in-baltimore-remains-challenge.html

Westport: What is left of the big dreams

The Middle Branch, long a forgotten stepchild in Baltimore known for a giant casino garage, an animal shelter and Nick's Fish-House and numerous derelict industrial sites, has been the target of ideas and plans since at least 1990. It became a field of dreams when investors commuted Westport and Port Covington into the canvas of their ambitious . But as it often happens in Baltimore, really big dreams often evaporate and the pioneers are not rewarded while those who come in after them reap the benefits.

Initially proposed Stonewall Westport development

What is on the table now for actual development is neither Pat Turners multi billion Westport plan nor Kevin Plank's Under Armour International Headquarters. Both projects went poof, the one a victim of the financial crisis and the other a victim of flying just a bit too high. 

First to deflate was Baltimore developer Pat Turner's Westport., He had successfully converted an abandoned Locust Point grain silo complex into a gleaming condo tower. In Westport he scaled his ambitions up: Silo Point's architect Parameter together with the nationally renowned environmental green consultant Field Operations (The High Line, NYC) designed a development with 2 million sq. ft. of office space, 300,000 sq. ft. of retail, and 2,000 residential units. Turner spent a lot of money on clearing the land of the old Carr Lowry glass factory and the BGE substation. It all went up in smoke when Turner couldn't secure enough funding to even hold on to the cleared site. Under Armour's ambitions at that time were still high enough that they not only wanted to develop all of Port Covington but also purchased the Westport land in a foreclosure sale.  Likely as an expansion site. 

As in the story of Icarus, who flew to close to the sun with his waxen wings, Under Armour came crashing back into reality when the company was battling slumping sales and an investigation from the Federal Securities and Exchange Commission. The so far most recent reality check came when the all out last ditch effort of attracting Amazon's fable second headquarters at Port Covington fizzled so badly that Baltimore didn't even make it to Amazon's shortlist. Social impact investment had not been what Jeff Bezos had in mind.

Pat Turner's Westport development 

The current reality is more modest: Spearheaded by Weller Development construction activity right now is limited to a single block on which to date mostly underground utilities have been placed. The proposed new buildings have been already postponed a few times, certainly COVID didn't help. Originally announced as "Cyber Town USA" the block now is now simply a 400,000sf mixed use project still looking for tenants. Meanwhile Plank Industries has liquidated Westport.

That brings us to the second more modest proposal reality, the redevelopment of the Westport site by Ray Jackson's Stonewall Capital which has won the bidding war for the Westport site for which it currently holds an option. Jackson started about 17 years ago with small rowhouse rehabs in Baltimore's trendy neighborhoods of Federal Hill, Fells Point, Locust Point and Canton which he flipped from his space in Sparks. His work scaled all the way to a 600 acre greenfield development called Southfields, a "Transformational Development for the Town of Elkton" which is supposed to convert rural Cecil County "into an industrial, commercial and residential base" as the BBJ put it. The project with its 250-acre industrial park, 1,000 residential units, 250,000 square feet of commercial/retail space and a 50-acre sports complex is underway and, according to Jackson, has not slowed down because of COVID. 

Meanwhile Westport's new developer wasted no time and entered the picture with a very practical development proposal that includes 275 garage townhomes; 300 affordable multi-family units, 1,000 market rate units and 40,000 sq. ft. of commercial and retail space and an 100,000 sq. ft. office building. The development  proposes 11.8 acres of open space including a large park in the center of the development. 

Field Operations competition entry: Rendering

That concept was presented on December 10 of last year and promptly experienced its Waterloo in the initial review of the City's design review panel UDAAP. Below a sampling of the comments the reviewers made:

• it’s difficult to see what’s being proposed, and the poor quality of the graphics (and spelling) detracts from the presentation
• Information is vague – it’s difficult to assess the feasibility or desirability of proposed moves; e.g. Mobility Framework Plan on Slide 12: the circulation lines overlaid on the aerial image are not in scale and it’s unclear how they actually sit in the landscape. Also, there is missing information in bullet-point #2.
• Building massing contradicts stated goals of preserving sight lines, connecting to the neighborhood and creating a cohesive connection to water edge
• Very little relationship among new buildings, between buildings and water edge, and between new and existing development – needs to be developed more purposefully to feel deliberate

Those harsh verdicts presented an interesting situation, given that the design was presented by none lesser than Doug McCoach, the City's former Planning Director who used to sit on the other side at design reviews and held that office when the first official Middle Branch Masterplan was enacted in 2007. McCoach gave the UDAAP panelists an excellent site analysis. But as the comments prove, the suggested plan concept for a cluster of rowhouses on the west end a bunch of office buildings on the east side of the land, both separated by a park, had little to do with the analysis. Especially the 275 townhomes looked like a copy straight out of some high density suburban builder's blueprint, oddly shifted against the rowhouse blocks of old Westport. 

Revised Stonewall plan with parks and critical area highlighted

 

Unfazed, the design team went back to the drawing board and showed in January a slightly revised plan with streets that are now aligned with the Westport grid and included responses to earlier UDAAP comments regarding connections and circulation. The comments from UDAAP were milder in the second round but still did don't represent a ringing endorsement:

• Kit of parts – now that the team has mapped strategies for the site, it’s time to go back and build on the idea of assembling the buildings and public spaces from a kit of parts to help it read as a neighborhood.
• Study the relationship between the Parcels (A, B, C, D, E) in more detail – open spaces are serving as separators between types of buildings (the overlook park, central park, etc.) Spaces could benefit from a cohesion of typology versus a change of typology. Doesn’t currently convey a feeling that you’re “some place” but rather that you’re between places.
• Team is encouraged to look at precedents outside of Baltimore that have always been waterfront connected 
• Important to continue to study the site in section; need to see a north-south section through the centralized park from the rowhouses on Parcel B to the mixed-use multifamily on Parcel C to understand the change in scale.
• With regard to the townhouse community (Parcel B), it seems to be very built-up with only a very narrow strip of green – feels a bit sterile and hard. Team should study ways to include more relief; could be achieved with pocket parks or with widening the landscaped portions, etc.

The project has been presented as to be built "by right", i.e. according to existing zoning. The implied suggestion is that the developer doesn't need anything from the City and therefore could proceed relatively unrestricted. Still, there are potential snags. The current land use law for this site is the Planned Unit Development which was created for Turner's previous Westport plan. Before the underlying base zoning would be in effect again, the PUD needs to be nullified. The plans show a lot of development inside the 100' Critical Area buffer, incursions the team intends to "mitigate" in its proposed parks. Critical area review can be stringent, even for urbanized areas, which is appropriate given the precarious state of the tidal waters of the Middle Branch and the Chesapeake. Even though the site has been cleared of all surface structures, surprises may loom underground for anybody who starts digging. Plus the site needs all new utilities and roads, in short, the same conditions that made Sagamore ask for the largest Tax Increment Financing deal in the history of the City. So far, Stonewall LLC has not indicated they want any public money. 

Rendered revised plan (Stonewall)

The Stonewall plans emerge while the masterplanning process for the Middle Branch is underway. The site sits at the foot of the community of Westport which had its hopes up and down over a long time, dashed by first failing industries and then deflated dreams. Westport is one of the  partners in the  South Baltimore Gateway Partnership that benefits from Casino proceeds and is part of a community benefits agreement with Sagamore where proceeds were expected from the giant Port Covington development. In its delayed and reduced form the agreement has not yet provided the boost the communities had hoped for. 

Clearly communities are weary but at the same time eager to see actual progress.

It doesn't help that Ray Jackson's Stonewall LLC does not intend to stick around to actually build the project but just assembles the "entitlements" thsat come from an approved development plan and then hand the site over to builders. Kevin Lynch's South Baltimore reported that Jackson has selected Ryan Homes as the builder for phase one and wants to break ground in the next 12 to 18 months for the townhomes, the park, and possibly the first apartment building with its 350 market-rate units and some/retail space. 

In this mix the communities, especially the Westport CEDC, the South Baltimore Gateway Partnership, the Baltimore City departments of Planning, Parks and Recreation and others are currently trying to figure out how to proceed. 

Especially the  Middle Branch masterplanning effort needs to be fruitfully integrated, it just makes no sense to have such a large part of the shoreline taken up and be spoken for before the masterplan effort has even fully gotten off the ground. The South Baltimore Gateway Partnership is in negotiations how to bring in the highly qualified masterplan designers to have a say in the design of the parks and the waterfront design which could afterwards be deeded back to the public.

To recap: The City and the Parks and People Foundation had looked for big-name designers to update the 2007 Middle Branch masterplan with state of the art greenways, trails, and sustainable resilience features appropriate for the shores of  the Middle Branch. Thinking about this "second waterfront", goes back to a report of the Urban Design Committee of AIA Baltimore in 1997 when they looked at the potential of the Middle Branch and its many industrial brownfields. At the end of the Parks and People design competition, Rotterdam's West 8, Urban Design & Landscape Architecture emerged as the winner among four shortlisted firms with global portfolios and received a $325,000 contract. But this dream almost deflated as well when the design team lost the Dutch lead designer West 8, over a kerfuffle about De swarte Piet, a Dutch blackface figure that had made an appearance at a company holiday party years earlier. 

That, too was a typical Baltimore situation, where the volatile mix of inequity, redlining, and segregation didn't take this flap lightly, even though the loss of this strong design firm looked a bit like  cutting off the nose to spite the face. 

The Middle Branch masterplan design team has now been reconfigured with a number of additional names, including James Corner Field Operations (JCFO), the company that had been on Turner's Westport team before, and had already placed second in NDC's Middle Branch design competition behind West 8. 

The Westport site is a linchpin in a continuous public shoreline along the entire Middle Branch and an associated bike-hike trail system that currently is temporarily placed on the old Kloman Street hemmed in between the elevated light rail tracks and a still active freight rail track. The Westport waterfront brownfield is also a key element in a new shoreline that is built to best practice standards for resilience against rising sea levels, sustainability, stormwater and habitat protection. (Reimagine)

Field Operations Competition entry: Trail network

The site further provides the the Westport community an opportunity to regain access to the waterfront and have some urgently needed parks and green spaces. The potential boost from a major investment needs to be carefully calibrated with the needs of a disadvantaged community so it doesn't result in gentrification and displacement, or the demise of commercial establishments along Westport's "main" street (Annapolis Road). 

For all those goals to be met, Stonewall already had numerous meetings with the community. The design certainly deserves broad public vetting with public workshops, lots of "daylight" in the negotiations of the open spaces, and opportunities for all affected communities and stakeholders to build "ownership" in the new development. It must be ensured that the community's and the stakeholders' long-term interests are not only heard but baked into the plan through oversight and control mechanism that persist, no matter who the builders will be, or what the uncertainties of the residential, office, hospitality and retail real estate markets may be. It is time that Westport can see something good becoming reality on this shore of the Middle Branch.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Slightly modified for clarification on 3/18/21

How the Baltimore SUN hijacked a Hopkins Study

 Johns Hopkins 21st Century City initiative recently published an analysis with the title: 

"Investing in High-Speed Rail to Washington, D.C. to Boost Baltimore’s Economy.”

 In the study it is suggested that MARC trains should be faster so they could leverage the real estate market differential between Baltimore and Washington. One of the study authors is Ron Hartman, from 1984-93 MTA administrator, later an Amtrak official and a CEO of Veolia Transportation and a current board member of the Baltimore Central Maryland Transportation Alliance (CMTA), a transit advocacy group. 

MARC Penn Line: In 48 minutes from Baltimore to DC for $8.00

The brief paper acknowledges that COVID and a 90% loss of riders on MARC trains will change the market potential between DC and Baltimore but still suggests that not enough is done to connect the two cities with fast and reliable transit. One can certainly agree, even though COVID has made the DC office worker a much less viable entity to fill Baltimore's empty rowhouses. Too many work for home now, and chances are, they will continue to do so in bigger numbers than before. Hence the empty MARC trains. 

A summary of the Mirage News service summarizes the paper this way:

“There are few pairs of neighboring cities in the United States such that one city is booming while the nearby city is struggling,” states the report, co-authored by Mac McComas, senior program manager at 21st Century Cities Initiative. “Just 40 miles to the north of economically booming Washington, D.C. lies economically struggling Baltimore City.”

That proximity “offers the possibility that an effective investment in cross-city transit could help residents of both cities to gain improvements in quality of life and economic vitality,” the report states. Faster train service would offer more affordable living options for D.C. residents struggling with skyrocketing costs while opening a lucrative job market to Baltimore residents.

The state has two options for providing faster MARC service: convert existing local trains to express schedules or adding new trains with limited or non-stop service. The authors note how the political timing could be right for pursuing such investments. President Joe Biden, a longtime champion and user of Amtrak, could usher in more federal investment in public transit through his administration’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan. Doing so would mesh with new Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott’s transportation initiatives.

The next generation Amtrak Acela Alstom train starting service this year
Amtrak Video

What did the Baltimore SUN make out of that study in their main editorial commentary on Wednesday?  They turned a paper about MARC into an argument for Maglev, the magnetically levitated trains that the Japanese want to desperately want to sell here! The SUN graced its commentary with this title: 

"What do you call a 311-mph train serving Baltimore? "

If Baltimore is to fully recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and flourish in a way that it was not before the virus even arrived, what it needs most is for its residents to have better access to well-paying jobs. Expecting those jobs to suddenly plop down in Baltimore once herd immunity is achieved is beyond improbable. But what if the city could be served by a high-speed train that could get passengers from a station in Cherry Hill to the heart of Washington, D.C. and its wealth of employment opportunities in just 15 minutes? That may strike some as unlikely, too, but with Joe Biden in the White House, a proposed privately-operated maglev train serving the Northeast Corridor — beginning with Baltimore-Washington and capable of speeds of 311 miles per hour or more — suddenly doesn’t seem qu,ite so far-fetched. And the latest study from Johns Hopkins University’s 21st Century Cities Initiative lays out the argument for how Baltimore could receive an extraordinary economic boost from such a project.

The entire Hopkins paper never mentions Maglev once. Certainly no MARC train would ever do 311mph.The Hopkins paper authors even picked a place in Baltimore for its trip time comparison Balto to DC via car versus via train from where to start would be very disadvantageous for the Maglev train which is proposed to end at Westport/Cherry Hill and never make it to downtown Baltimore. 

What the SUN editorial did with the Hopkins study is really poor journalism. It graced its commentary  graced in its online edition with a Maglev train photo and pretended the study would make an argument for Maglev when that is far from true. Study author Hartman tells me he is no proponent of Maglev.  Taking the Hopkins study and put it into a totally different context is bad, but it is  also bad to merely advocate for the Maglev trains as a solution that would be of interest for those who would want to live in Baltimore and work in DC. That logic just doesn't hold up as will show below.

(As a small fix, the SUN later edited their online version to at least acknowledge that the Hopkins paper never mentions MagLev).  For those who don't know what Maglev means, here the explanation in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement that released for public comment in December.

SC-MAGLEV is a transportation technology developed by the Central Japan Railway Company (JRC), but not currently in operation in the United States. The SCMAGLEV system relies on powerful magnetic forces to operate and results in travelling speeds of over 300 miles per hour. Unlike typical electric trains in service in the United States, a SCMAGLEV system does not operate on standard steel railroad tracks. (DEIS)

Maglev alignments shown in the DEIS

As I have commented many times in various blog articles (here and here), Maglev is a "future technology" of the distant past that Germany began hawking to the world some 50 years ago and that now Japan tries to sell so badly that they offered to pay a chunk of the huge $16.3 billion cost that a DC to Cherry Hill train would cost.

A 311mph train that starts in DC, stops at BWI and then at Cherry Hill serves no transportation purpose whatsoever! Least the budget conscious DC worker who would buy a house in Baltimore to save money. It wouldn't  serve people who board today's MARC commuter trains at Penn Station, in West Baltimore, in Halethorpe or in Odenton, all stations which very high boardings that Maglev would not serve becaue it is so busy being fast that it can't stop. 

It wouldn't serve New Carrolton either, an important intermodal node with lots of new development in the DC orbit. It would certainly cost as much as a ticket on Amtrak's ACELA trains which already travel as a high speed trains (38 minutes travel time) between DC and Baltimore for a minimum of $44 one way. (Compared to $8 on MARC). A fare way too high for the imaginary budget conscious DC worker moving to Baltimore! 

So Maglev doesn't serve the regular DC-Baltimore resident who wants to shuttle between the two metro areas. Would it serve the business traveler going up to Philly, New York or Boston? Nope! Riders who want to go to Philadelphia or New York would have to travel to Westport/Cherry Hill and then take a bus or Light Rail to trek from there to continue their trip. Something that nobody would do who could instead sit in a spanking new 150mph + AMTRAK train without any transfer. It is this confusion between long distance travel and local commuting that is the problem of the Maglev industry ever after they failed to sell any country a long distance solution. Thus the only magnetic leviated train in revenue service is an airport shuttle in Shanghai that is barely used because it duplicates a slower cheaper conventional shuttle. 

It is the blind adulation of speed and technology by folks like the SUN editorial board and Governor Hogan that has brought the Baltimore to DC Maglev boondoggle back from death multiple times over recent decades. This time all the way to a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) and two alternative alignments (one not recommended version would end at Camden Yards). And to be sure, the DEIS is administered by MDOT, MTA and the Federal Transit Administration who all have to spend useful resources on this nonsense. (DEIS comments can be made here).

True, President Biden is known to be a friend of trains, and also possible, there may come an ambitious investment in rail, for Amtrak, for MARC and for urban transit as part of a recovery investment package. many friends of better transportation hope for that. 

But any money and energy spent towards Maglev is money spent on subverting and undercutting the plans for better NE corridor AMTRAK high speed rail, for better Maryland commuter trains (MARC) and better bus and light rail connections between the two metro areas of DC and Baltimore. Anyone who says otherwise is just not telling the truth. 

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Japan started planning a long distance Maglev project  between Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka in 1973. It was planned to open service on its first leg in 2027. That date is now uncertain due to COVID disruptions, questions about the future of business travel and a provincial government objecting to a tunnel for environmental reasons. 

Adding to the stalemate between Shizuoka and JR Central is the coronavirus pandemic, which has endangered the maglev project’s already questionable profitability.

In 2013, Yoshiomi Yamada, then-president of JR Central, admitted at a news conference that “there is no way” the maglev initiative will register a surplus on its own, and that the cost of building it is so huge that it can only barely be offset by revenues from the conventional Tokaido Shinkansen Line that it operates.

But COVID-19 has taken a toll on the firm’s prosperous high-speed train business, slashing passenger traffic by about 90 percent in April and May from a year earlier.

Moreover, the pandemic has “made many businesspeople realize they can replace their traditional trips with teleconferences,” Mitsuhiro Miyashita, chief consultant at Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting Co., says. The normalization of online meetings, he says, suggests demand for conventional business trips via shinkansen won’t fully recover even after the pandemic has subsided.

This new normal is threatening to question the raison d’etre of the maglev shinkansen project itself, sparking skepticism among some toward the necessity of its 500-kph speed.

“We need to adapt to a new era,” Kawakatsu told Kaneko.

“The internet is faster than the maglev train, you know.” (The Japan Times)

LIVE Baltimore study shows City growth potential

I have long held the opinion that if there is one silver bullet that could solve multiple Baltimore problems at once, it would be growing the population of the City. (See my November article, Grow the City!). 

New housing on Paca Street downtown.
(Photo: Philipsen) 

Now a study titled  "An Analysis of Baltimore City’s Residential Market Potential" released by the non-profit organization LIVE Baltimore suggests that it could be done. 

The study demonstrates that the City’s residential housing market is strong, and that additional housing stock is needed to meet it. Zimmerman/Volk Associates (ZVA), conducted this first-ever analysis of residential market potential for all of Baltimore City. The study addressed these questions:

•Where the potential renters and buyers of new and existing housing units in Baltimore are likely to move from (the draw areas).

• How many households have the potential to move within and to the City each year if appropriate housing units became available (depth and breadth of the market).

• Who the households are that represent the potential market for new units in the City (the target markets).

• Housing preferences of those households—rental or ownership, multi-family, or single-family.

• What the target households can pay to rent or purchase new and/or

renovated dwelling units in the City.

• How quickly the new/renovated units will lease or sell (absorption forecasts).

The analysis projects that between 5,300 and 7,100 households would rent or buy new or significantly renovated homes each year over the next five years if such homes were added to the City’s housing stock. Those would be in addition to those households renting or buying units now.

Filling this number of additional housing units would be a major step forward as it would help grow the population, generate new economic activity, and expand Baltimore’s tax base.

Live Baltimore's Executive Director Anne Milli states in the press release of her organization: 

“These numbers suggest a bright future for Baltimore City, and they tell us clearly who makes up the potential residential market. Policy makers should use this study to inform strategies that increase the number of people living in the City. If we renovate or build the right kinds of housing at the right prices, we can retain and attract thousands more Baltimoreans. These numbers provide a roadmap for how the City can grow its residential base and become stronger economically.” (Anne Milli)

The report clears up which key demographics constitute the largest potential residential market in Baltimore City:  63% young single people and childless couples, other families of all kinds account for  a distant 21%, and retirees and empty nesters trail with just 16 %. This breakdown isn't exceptional for Baltimore since nationally only 22% of households are still the traditional family with children. Like it or not, the study seems to suggest that Millennials, indeed, drive the influx of new residents. But there is a counterforce at work so that the City still lost overall population: More people are moving out than are moving in. The Zimmermann/Volk study appears to suggest that moving out could also be driven by lack of the appropriate housing since it identified the demand in the market as stemming 2/3 from existing residents and 1/3 from coming form the outside:

• More than 44,000 households could potentially move into existing and new housing units in Baltimore each year. 
• An estimated 58 percent live in the City now, with another 20 percent living in Baltimore County, Anne Arundel County, or Howard County.
• 59 % would look for rental homes, 
• 41 % would opt for homeownership.

The study concludes that the potential residential market is made up of households of all incomes would look for homes to buy or rent in a wide range of prices including some that would need financial assistance or subsidies for housing. The lack of quality affordable housing has long been established along with the fact that the available resources are far smaller than needed to meet the demand.

But as LIVE Baltimore emphasizes, there is also a healthy demand for mixed-income with more than a third of households identified in the potential market having incomes that meet or exceed the average for the region. This finding matches the experience of 2019 and even COVID year 2020 as the best years for Baltimore’s housing market in a decade. The study also identifies what type of homes potential buyers and renters would look for:

• 46 % of possible owners would  prefer rowhouses or townhomes. (This type of home represents an estimated 52 percent of the existing housing stock in the City.)
• 37 percent would likely choose to buy single-family detached houses (currently just 14 percent of Baltimore’s housing units).
• 17 percent  would opt for multi-family units—condominiums or co-operative apartments.

New Mayor Brandon M. Scott who can find various grow the City recommendations in the Transition Report released this Tuesday (2-9-21) said about the LIVE Baltimore study: “It’s clear from this report that we have momentum to build on as we grow our city and reimagine equitable economic development in Baltimore.” The study authors clearly hope that the Mayor and his department heads will take the study to heart. They imagine it to be used for:

• Enabling smarter, more targeted marketing to prospective City residents
• Serving as a development prospectus for the entire City of Baltimore
• Contributing to the planning of City-sponsored housing developments, limiting, for example, market cannibalization between neighborhoods,
• Encouraging citywide growth
• Benefitting the work of the Baltimore Department of Housing and Community Development and Department of Planning, as well as Baltimore Development Corporation, neighborhood-based community development corporations, and others

This is a lot of expectation for a study that essentially concludes that Baltimore could grow by an additional 5,300 households each year for the next five years if enough housing could be constructed or renovated. It is very close to what Mayor Stephany Rawlings Blake established as the first ever specific growth target for Baltimore and that she failed to achieve in the end, because having a potential market alone isn't enough to actually realize it. This growth would be about 53,000 residents in five years (assuming an average household size of 2.0 persons), in my estimation less than half of what the City would need to eliminate residential abandonment and achieve fiscal stability. 

The study does not address the various housing submarkets in Baltimore (apparently work is underway to study "micro-markets")and their very different attractiveness for the identified market nor does it address the annual supply of new and renovated housing units, whether the the supply pipeline matches the market and where the major discrepancies between supply and demand  are or how they could be alleviated.  Hopefully Mayor Scott will establish not only a specific growth target but also the policies to actually achieve it. 

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

How COVID gave Baltimore "Slow Streets"

While many office workers hunkered down in their home office a movement swept across the United States like wildfire. Its name: "Slow Streets". What would take years in the normal bureaucratic grist mill of local traffic planning was churned out within weeks of the initial lockdown last spring. Before motorists or residents could think twice, they faced makeshift barricades on their local streets that looked like some tactical urbanists would have nailed them together overnight. This isn't far from the truth. 

Slow Streets at Perkins Homes (Photo: Philipsen)

Baltimore was on the ball with a City Council bill matching the approach of other cities: Introduced on May 11, the bill passed a week later as an ordinance that mandated a minimum of 25-miles of Slow Streets in Baltimore City. The temporary program is intended to discourage residents and visitors from driving on all “Slow Streets” unless they are necessary to reach their final destination and provide residents more space for "social distancing". The ordinance expires when social distancing is no longer needed. City DOT established a website where the program is explained:

The Slow Streets program is intended to support safe, essential physical activity by creating more space for social distancing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. DOT has implemented the 25-mile goal mandated by The Baltimore City Council. The program is now in its “Evaluation Phase”. The public comment period ended on January 24th. We appreciate your feedback and will publish the results soon. Check back here for updates.

 "Slow Streets" urges all people driving to drive slowly and safely to respectfully share the road with people walking and biking. Mayor Jack Young was in support of it and expanded it around Lake Montebello, a popular bike and hiking spot. Soon Baltimore City had the full 25 miles of designated Slow Streets in place. 

Slow Streets in many cities: San Francisco 

But soon the insight dawned that a simple street barricade won't change behavior much. When the wooden barricade showed up on Paca Street, just north of Franklin Street, presumably to protect the residents of Seton Hill and provide better access to Seton Park, it was obvious that the heavily traveled corridor wouldn't be calmed by this simple contraption. It was soon pushed aside and then disappeared altogether.  

Per the bill City DOT had made an effort to apply the Slow Streets evenly and include more distressed communities as well. Barriers along the Perkins Homes on Gough Street were simply ignored by drivers traversing on this route and it was not obvious what the residents of Perkins Homes  would do with the barren and presumably calmer street, even though they don't have lots of open space. 

A clear shortcoming of the fast roll-out was that residents had little say in it. This has been a problem in other cities as well. Some residents liked what they saw, others less so. 

Residents of Hunting Ridg,e where an entire area was zoned as "Slow Street", took their kids on out for a small Halloween parade in the middle of Glen Allen Street, a perfect use, but just for a day. As DOT Director Steve Sharkey explains: The law requires people to use the sidewalk if there is one, the Slow Street designation doesn't change that.  50 years after the Dutch invented the Woonerf, (a small residential street with a shared surface in which the playing kids have the right of way and cars are only tolerated as guests), such regulation is still not present in the US traffic encyclopedia titled "Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices" or MUTC. Asked about the regulations and the prospects for shared streets DOT spokesperson Virgil German  confirmed:

Woonerf sign in Europe: Kids first

"Current state legislation makes a woonerf or shared street more difficult with our existing infrastructure because pedestrians are technically required to utilize the sidewalk on an active/open street.  However, this style of street is being designed/constructed in areas around the city with more dense activity, including Port Covington and the planned entertainment district on Warner Street." (City DOT, Virgil German) 

As it stands now, DOT is in an evaluation phase. As  Mr German informed me, "BCDOT is in the process of considering the placement of signs at key locations to deter “cut-through traffic,” where barriers were previously placed until we can procure new, more durable barriers". This is whats City DOT's website says:

During the evaluation phase, residents will notice short term changes to the Slow Streets program. As a result of our preliminary findings, BCDOT will remove the temporary street barriers to address ongoing community concerns and maintenance issues. BCDOT is currently working to secure funding for upgraded barriers that will enhance the Slow Streets program. The temporary barriers have been removed and Slow Streets signage and information will be reinstalled. (DOT website)

Outdoor seating carved out from Thames Street. (Photo: Philipsen)

Other changes that Baltimoreans saw popping up, almost over night, are the outdoor dining spaces that were carved out from curbside parking or, at times, even from travel lanes. 

Those type installations had been before only as one-day exhibits of creative "tactical urbanism" under the label PARKing Day, a movement that initiated in San Francisco. 

Outdoor dining was for years something that was relegated to skinny sidewalks, some terraces and rooftops but generally much more rare in Baltimore than tourists know it from Barcelona, Paris or Florence or Mexican tourist towns. A few cities such as Montreal had developed the mini terraces in the street as a formal annual city program that expanded restaurant space during the warmer months of the year and gave Montreal even more of an old world flair. 

It isn't clear what the long-term prospects of Slow Streets are and how this ad-hoc measure can fold into the longstanding "Complete Streets" program in effect in Baltimore, also based on City Council bill. That one, though, had been in the making for years and is progressing at a sluggish pace. The program's most visible pieces are a few protected bike lanes and about 5 miles of designated bus lanes. In spite of explicit language in the Complete Streets bill that specifically addresses equity, the concept of complete streets is eyed with suspicion by some who see it as a means of gentrification.  

DOT's Virgil German expresses optimism how the Slow Streets can advance:

Children Halloween parade in Hunting Ridge
Photo: Philipsen

We believe that enhanced traffic calming measures that incorporate using traffic diverters or alternating one-way patterns can be an evolution of the Slow Streets Program, where streets would be calmed to decrease traffic volume and traffic speeds while increasing the opportunity for recreation.  Our agency is also looking at opportunities to close streets to vehicular traffic entirely, like in the case of Lake Montebello, or other opportunities in and around parks. (City DOT, Virgil German) 

As in many other instances, the COVID-19 pandemic has been like a magnifying glass. In the case of Baltimore's streets, it highlighted how important the streets are as a public space that can  be so much more than just a conduit for traffic. The many new outdoor restaurant spaces will certainly be welcome even beyond the pandemic. 

If the view of the street as a meaningful public space prevails even after the pandemic subsides, Baltimore will have become better for it. 

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

. 

How Cooperating Leaders Will Shape the Future of the Baltimore Region

 On a cool winter Monday morning the newly minted Mayor Brandon Scott and the also still relatively new Executives of Baltimore, Anne Arundel and Howards County, Olszewski, Pittman and Ball huddled around the entrance to Hopkins subway station.  They held a press conference in support of transit funding. Together they demanded better funding of the MTA which serves all four of the jurisdictions with bus or rail service. No longer see the regional leaders transit as only an issue that affects merely Baltimore City.

A bit later in January Steuart Pittman launched an online "Future Forum" under the title "Common Ground: Urban Rural, Suburban". His speakers included former Baltimore Mayor Rawlings Blake, former State Planning Director Hall, The Bay Foundation's Allison Prost and Colby Ferguson from the MD Farm Bureau. There was some tough talk about land use and preserving open space. No longer sees this executive land use solely through the lens of homeowners and property rights. 

Pittman showed himself during his online event in front of a scenic photo of a farm meadow and a wooded edge. "This is the last larger farm near BWI", he explained, "it will soon become a bunch of warehouses. That wasn't in the plan", he observed, "but a council member voted for a zoning change, and so it goes", adding that this continued land consumption has to stop. Indeed, Maryland's' development footprint increased in the last 50 years more than it had occupied in the 250 years before, another way of saying it more than doubled in only 50 years! Neither city nor suburbs can thrive if the natural environment is destroyed.

The Baltimore Business Journal ran a cover story of its print edition under the headline "Howard County's Smart Growth Challenge" in which the paper points out that only 2% undeveloped or not protected open space is left for development in Howard County. Executive Ball promises a balance between the County's environmental, economic and social standing. His Planning Director is pointing to redevelopment as the new frontier for growth. 

“We are at a point in our maturity as a county where we are having to look at redevelopment opportunities for the future and less on typical suburban growth patterns,” Amy Gowan, director of Howard County’s Department of Planning and Zoning.

For a shift in the growth paradigm it comes in handy that both, Baltimore County and Howard County are starting new masterplans this year. Brandon Scott has vowed to restructure City government and pay way more attention to the City's disinvested neighborhoods. Equity and economic development is no longer a zero sum game where one jurisdiction can thrive while the other fails.

Mayor Scott and Executives Olszewski (at the podium), Ball and
Pittman at the Johns Hopkins Metro Station.

Together these young leaders can be quite a force. Will they be?

The Baltimore Metro area, as defined by the Baltimore Metropolitan Council, also includes Harford and Carroll Counties which are more rural and more conservative and have historically put their foot on the break when the core jurisdictions became too brash. Given the multi-pronged crisis we are facing, the quartet of progressive young leaders may just be the medicine this region needs if they continue to forge ahead with a coordinated and prudent land use and transportation strategy that looks at economic development, environmental protection and social justice all at once. There is much to do.

• Sprawl is continuing unabated, threatening farms and forests and putting pressure on the designated agricultural preserves all the while Baltimore City's population continues to shrink and the amount of abandoned land grows.
• Neither in the three Counties nor in the City growth does development pay any attention to where transit is already on the ground, especially expensive high capacity rail transit. Before Hogan Maryland's Department of Transportation had once worked out that all of the State's growth could fit into the underdeveloped lands around existing transit stations. 
• All three Counties have a history of picking the lucrative raisins out of growth combined with overt racism. As a result economic energy was directed towards the suburbs and siphoned out of the region's core city. 

Racism is how light rail never made it through Glen Burnie to reach Annapolis, how Ruxton fended off a light rail station, how in Owings Mills the terminal Metro station was kept isolated in a highway median, far away from the now defunct and demolished mall, and how a segment of the planned and then defeated  Baltimore City freeway network was built in an African American neighborhood. ("The Highway to Nowhere").

Steuart Pittsman's new platform: Future Matters

All four jurisdictions never zoned land so development would be concentrated where the MTA stations are. The region's lukewarm relation to MTA and its transit system was a key reason why Hogan could get away with killing $ billion Red Line and returning nearly $1 billion of federal funds to the feds. For decades transit oriented development (TOD) remained just a slogan with a few half-hearted projects such as Symphony Center, Odenton and Dorsey Road as fig leaves on the generally dismal state of affairs. Of course, today Howard County would love to have rail access to Columbia. Instead it lost its bus life line when MTA struck the 150 Express bus, the only transit connection from Columbia to downtown. 

Although land use (and its relation to transit) sounds like a geeky and esoteric topic to most people, it is key to solve the cacophony of crisis we currently face: 

• the crisis of inequity and racism, 
• the crisis of climate change and 
• the crisis of depleted public coffers. 

As the above examples illustrate, sprawl and dispersal of development have facilitated racial and income segregation. Sprawl consumes viable natural resources and exacerbates the climate crisis; sprawl also depletes public funds, because the dispersed infrastructure is fiscally unsustainable in the longer run.  

Rash development on green fields once created a gold rush of quick revenue for local government. Increasingly this pattern has turned into a fiscal liability with the insight that edge developments age and the endless new roads, schools, and pipes will have to be maintained or repaired. Meanwhile the core city of the region, Baltimore is suffering from abandonment. Its concentrations of poverty, crime and failing schools have long become a problem that also affects the surrounding communities and the State of Maryland as a whole. The Baltimore region is not unique in this paradigm. In fact, the entire US will be in trouble if the trifecta of inequality, climate crisis and public debt isn't addressed promptly and fairly radically.

The pandemic has made discrepancies crystal clear. Although experts differ greatly in their predictions of what the longterm effects of this unprecedented health crisis will be, they agree that it has already heightened and amplified all the other ailments from which our nation suffers. 

Regional problem: Trash

Mayor Scott and County Executives Olsziewski, Ball and Pittman need all the support they can get to succeed in turning the regional ship around. The Maryland Legislature is considering several bills this period which would be of great help for the Central Maryland region. Two are of exceptional interest: The Transit Safety Investment Act and the Climate Solutions Now bill. The former is the reason why the Executives had gathered at the Hopkins subway station.   

Many other urgent issues that affect everyone's daily life are awaiting solution and know no jurisdictional boundaries: The aging regional water system and its billing troubles, the aging regional trash incinerator that sits in Baltimore City but 50% of the trash burnt there is from the County, the regional and State electric grid that needs to become more resilient and much greener and the Chesapeake Bay which knows no boundaries, only watersheds. (A WYPR moderated discussion with County Executive Olszewski and others about regional collaboration for the Chesapeake is here).

The Baltimore region is one of only a very few in the nation, where the core city is not part of the surrounding county. While there is little hope for a truly regional government in the near future, well cooperating leaders and legislators are exactly what is needed to solve our multi-prong crisis. But they can only succeed if residents are willing to bury the illusion that they will be fine if they managed to secure a safe and secluded spot on the map and that racism, climate or transportation should not concern them. 

With collaboration and a focus on regional solutions the untapped potential of our metro area is vast. Let's tap it!

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

A New Tune from City DOT

For years Baltimore City DOT mostly made headlines for unfixed potholes, badly timed traffic signals, the faltering of the once popular Circulator bus, followed by the faltering of the Baltimore Water Taxi service (a private service licensed by the City), and the collapse of Baltimore Bikeshare. As frosting on these failures DOT installed bikelanes and then ripped some out again. To boot it missed opportunities to apply for federal grants or to submit the transportation "priority letter" to MDOT in time. The litany of misery was topped off when employees resigned en masse due to alleged abusive behavior of the director and finally the director herself suddenly departed in the wake of Mayor Pugh's "Healthy Holly" scandal.

A new age for Baltimore City transportation (Photo Phlipsen)

Then came Steve Sharkey, a manager who switched over from the Office of General Services and was tasked by then Mayor Young to get DOT  in order, mostly by managing better what MC DOT has to manage. 

This was no small assignment, considering  that the department, which was split from Public Works some years ago in the hope of giving transportation more attention, manages about 30% of the City's land area which happen to be the public roads, plazas and alleys. 

DOT also runs or licenses the City's cool mobility systems, the water Connector, the water taxi, the Circulator and the various scooter and bikeshare services. 

How much BC-DOT has changed becomes already clear  when one opens the department's website: Instead of a photo of the Director accompanied with a murky message there is now a clearly structured welcome page with buttons for the main aspects of DOT's work, along with a status report using the traffic signal colors showing which services are running under COVID.

Baltimore bus lanes (BC-DOT image)

The new City DOT 18 months with Sharkey's at the helm came into even starker focus at this week's morning meeting of the transit advocacy group Transit Choices where Sharkey was the keynote speaker. He started his presentation by focusing on the 29% of City households who don't own a car and going from their to stress the importance of MTA's bus service. "Bus transit is an important basic function in the city along with fire police and water", and defining as part of his work the question" How can the city be a partner to MTA, especially for the bus?" adding that "buses are the workhorses of transit in American cities and declaring that "Its true economic development to connect people to their jobs". When did one ever hear words like this from a department that in the past was singularly focused on the automobile and the free flow on city streets?

Charm City: New Nova Bus (Photo: Philipsen)

"Part of the transit experience is the wait", Sharkey explained in transitioning to the importance of bus stops and the role that the City plays in approving and permitting stops and ensuring that the necessary amenities such as shelters can be placed.  "You can help by resisting those who want to remove bus stops because they don't like the people sitting under the shelters", he told the roughly 50 advocates following his presentation on Zoom. Addressing MDOT he said "We need to not cut transit in the middle of a crisis but support transit because we need it". Sharkey clearly understands that the State-run MTA bus transit can only function well when MTA and the City are partners. MTA buses run on City streets after all, and they can be only fast and reliable when they are not stuck in congestion, delayed by signals or falling apart because of the terrible condition of the pavement. 

The newly discovered partnership is not just a matter of words. Sharkey and Mayor Scott had recently a direct conversation with the MTA Administrator, something that nobody recalled to have happened ever before. 

The list of touch points in which the collaborative idea translates into actual projects is long. Sharkey ticked off these projects and investments:

• The "North Ave Rising" project under construction that installs 7 miles of additional bus lanes
• $5mio investments from federal money for capital improvements on priority bus bus routes.
• Easier permitting of the construction of shelters on City sidewalks
• Installation of signal priority (TSP) that gives buses some advantage at traffic signals 
• Corridor studies for the Blue and Orange Link bus routes from North Bend to Essex 
• The implementation of the City Council enacted Complete Streets law which requires that pedestrians, bicycles and buses have highest priority on public streets
• Support for the bus lane enforcement bill introduced by Delegate Robbyn Lewis (who also presented to Transit Choices)

  

  "Transit Deserts" (red, image BC-DOT)

  
  
• Support and participation in the Regional Transit Plan (RTP) and the corridor studies with two priority corridors in Baltimore City (east west and north south)
• Legislative support in Annapolis for the Transit Investment Act to be debated in Annapolis next week.
• Attention to the identified "transit deserts" in the name of better transit equity

"COVID hit transit hard, especially those agencies who are farebox dependent", Sharkey noted in concluding his remarks about working with MTA. 

Of course, as a transit provider, BC-DOT knows the impact of COVID on ridership first hand. The Harbor Connector, Baltimore's municipal version of water transit currently runs only 2 of 3 routes thanks to a severe drop in ridership. The remaining water taxi service licensed by DOT has been fully suspended. The Connector and the Charm City Circulator are both DOT operated transit services, originally funded by a surcharge on Baltimore's parking tax, but eventually becoming underfunded because "of mission creep" as Sharkey called it. He reported that the Orange and the Purple lines had the least decline in ridership. He noted as the biggest reason for past troubles the lack of maintenance on the Circulator buses. The City now operates six new buses and is in the process of adding six more and is reviewing the route map. "Stay tuned", Sharkey advised the audience. 

Asked about the bike-lanes Starkey pointed to the past high turn-over in the position of bike planner which he hopes has now stabilized, so the bike-share program "can be built back" and more bike lanes be added. 

Collaboration Opportunities (BC-DOT graphic)

Thanks to COVID the City saw an unprecedented installation of miles of BC-DOT designated "Slow Streets", as well as the use of street space for outdoor dining. 

Asked whether those saw-horse barricades would transform into a more permanent strategy, Sharkey allowed that not all of the program was as successful as the "recreational use" of closed streets around Lake Montebello. Adding that the Slow Streets also have a traffic calming component, he noted that regulations have to catch up, citing as an example the law that pedestrians have to use a sidewalk if there is one. This may explain the lack of acceptance in some areas which saw many of the "Road Closed" sawhorses simply being pushed to the side by motorists. We are replacing the flimsy sawhorses with more stable "class 3 barriers" he said, as it was done in other cities.  

The bus stop is part of the journey  (Photo: Philipsen)

An ably managed and led Department of Transportation has become the signature of many progressive cities which put quality of life, traffic safety, transit, alternative transportation and equity on the forefront of their agenda. 

Baltimore seems to be catching up. Mayor Scott who is much more interested in transportation than his predecessors is probably well advised by keeping Director Sharkey in place. 

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA