Thursday Links

There will not be a grocery store at the Charles Village site adjacent to JHU (Baltimore Sun)

Mount Vernon Mill No. 1 has 25 of its apartments rented. First tenets move in May 1st. (Baltimore Business Journal)

JHU Nursing graduate among the wounded in the April 15th bombings at the Boston Marathon (hub.jhu.edu)

Baltimore City might (finally) be (almost) cracking down on illegal dirt bikes, just send them an email! (Baltimore Fishbowl)

New Southbound platforms at Halethorpe MARC station will open on Monday. The Northbound platform and new overhead walkway and elevators will open in June. (MTA Maryland)

Pro-transit coalition in Canton wants streetcars instead of the Red Line on the east side, and wants those streetcars to go no where near Canton. (Baltimore Brew)

Using Existing Infrastructure to Build a Streetcar

For the past several years, there has been a push to put a streetcar along Charles Street, but let's just say there has been some resistance from some of the communities along Charles Street who feel that it will cause more trouble than good. I am definitely in favor of creating a new streetcar line in Baltimore, but I am not fully sold on the route that is currently being proposed by the Baltimore Streetcar Campaign.

The proposed route goes up starts at the Inner Harbor, goes north on Calvert, turns west on Redwood, and then north on Charles until University Parkway, where it loops and turns south on St. Paul Street. It then turns west on Mt Royal and then South on Maryland Ave/Cathedral Street/Liberty Street/Hopkins Place/Sharp Street turns east on Conway and then north on Light Street back to the Inner Harbor.

In my opinion there are two issues with this route: 1.) Charles Street is narrow and congested through Mount Vernon until past Penn Station; and 2.) the route on the southern half is really close in proximity to the Light Rail and almost duplicates that service.

An easy solution would be to shift the northbound streetcar to Calvert Street until Mount Royal Ave and then continue up Charles Street, and have the southbound streetcar traverse St Paul Street/Light Street for the entire route. This essential solves the two problems stated above. Calvert Street does not get nearly as congested as Charles Street can, and this would help to increase service downtown while at the same time helping to encourage development further east.

The biggest hurdle with any of this is cost. Right now the city is deeply focused on the Red Line, that if it is funded will not be operational until 2021 at the earliest.

The other option would be to use the existing infrastructure of the Light Rail. A streetcar route could branch off of the light rail along Howard Street to serve many possible areas of the city:

• Serve the Charles Street corridor in Mount Vernon/Station North/Charles Village/JHH
• Serve Remington or even Hampden by way of Howard Street/Maryland Ave
• Serve Bolton Hill and Reservoir Hill by way of Eutaw Place/Madison Ave.

For any of these options the Light Rail Station at Camden Yards could be a turnaround point.

Wednesday Links



Roland Park Water Tower, June 1911 (rolandpark.org)


City planning on giving funds to restore the Roland Park Water Tower (North Baltimore Patch)

Is former mayor Sheila Dixon considering a return to politics? (Baltimore Sun)

Baltimore plans on raising parking rates at city garages, but residents might catch a break (Baltimore Business Journal)

You will start to see ADA accessible taxis in the city. MTA also hopes to replace their Mobility fleet with the new MV-1 (Baltimore Sun)

Development pushes on in Remington despite the stalled 25th Street Station project. (Baltimore Brew)

Johns Hopkins continues its look into Station North, this time for space for its film and creative arts programs. (Bmore Media)

Tuesday Links

Dogwood in Hampden closed Sunday. (Baltimore Sun)

Baltimore is still a city that bleeds. (Baltimore Sun)

The House of Delegates wants a quick vote on the Governor's transportation plan. The House plan keeps the gas tax the same but generates a sales tax on gas that would total 3 cents over 3 years.  (Washington Post).

Baltimore Brew suggests housing homeless in city vacants, but it may not be that easy. (Baltimore Brew)

Orioles and Ravens cannot compromise on scheduling for home games on September 5th. (Camden Chat)

Medical Office Building Under Construction Near JHH

photo by the blogger

A new medical office building that was first reported on back in 2011 is under construction on the 400 block of N.Washington Street just a block away from the Johns Hopkins Hospital. According to the BBJ article and the architectural rendition outside the construction zone, it will be five stories and 50,000 square feet. The Department of Public Works gives more detail saying the project will have parking, office space, and a lobby on the first floor, and 4 floors of office space. The project should be completed by the end of 2013.

Just around the corner from this project, Jefferson Apartment Group is in full construction mode with the first phase of apartments called Jefferson Square at Washington Hill. This 5 story project will include a CVS Phramacy and the first apartments should be available by Summer 2014.

In Baltimore We Celebrate St Patrick's Day a Week Early!

If you see drunken hordes roaming around Federal Hill on Saturday wearing emerald, drinking green beer, and celebrating their Italian, German, English, "Irish" heritage don't be alarmed, because in Baltimore we like to celebrate St. Patrick's Day early!

Let's be honest here for a second. When St. Patrick's Day falls midweek, it makes sense to wear the green the weekend before. HOWEVER, St. Patrick's Day this year is a Sunday, so having all the festivities on Saturday, March 16th would be so much more sense, but not in our fair Charm City.

But wait there's more! The city's St. Patrick's Day Parade is this Sunday, March 10th. The parade is always held the Sunday before the holiday, but come on, this year it is a Sunday! Seriously how hard would that be? I still think it's wrong to not hold it on the day anyway like in New York or Dublin, but once again it's Baltimore and we do what we want.

Improving the Hampden Shuttle

Having moved to Hampden last summer from downtown Baltimore, I have come to enjoy the neighborhood feeling of the area: wider streets, bigger rowhomes, trees and grass, etc. But I have also realized just how car dependent Hampden and its immediate surroundings really are. It does not take long for the Avenue to get filled with cars in the morning or a busy evening, and traffic can get backed up along Falls Road because of the light signals at the Avenue, and at 41st Street.

Hampden is currently served by two local bus routes (22 and 27), the Hampden shuttle, and indirectly by the Woodberry Light Rail station. All of these options have problems that make it difficult for people to reliably use them to access Hampden. Let's explore.

The Route 22nd bus only runs along the northern edge of the neighborhood along 40th and 41st Streets. While it does run approximately every 10 minutes during the rush and about 20 minutes during the rest of the day, it does not serve the heart of Hampden. The Route 22 does not go anywhere near the business district of Baltimore, and so cannot be used directly for commuters.

The Route 27 is even worse, while it runs right down the Avenue and up Falls Road, and allows a rider to get downtown along the Howard Street corridor, it only runs every 40 minutes. This make it very difficult to use for commuting back and forth, or for the occasional rider.

The Woodberry Light Rail is generally the best option. It has the most direct service to downtown and has a higher frequency of service. The downside being that it is .5 miles from the heart of Hampden and at the bottom of a rather large hill. You can always catch the Route 98 Hampden Shuttle from here, but this brings me to the point of my post...the Hampden Shuttle is worthless!

I think I have been able to whittle down the issues with the Hampden shuttle to three main points.

1. It only circulates around Hampden. It doesn't connect to anything else other than Remington and Woodberry, so you cannot ride the 98 to anywhere else, nor can you get to Hampden from anywhere else on the 98.
2. It only runs every 40 minutes.
3. It only runs in one direction. 

With that said, I would suggest a few improvements that would make the Hampden Shuttle a better mode of transportation to access the neighborhood.

1. Connect the Hampden Shuttle to Penn Station. I would suggest routing the shuttle to continue down Howard Street, turn onto North Ave, and then SB on St. Paul to Penn Station, where it would loop back up Charles Street, and then continue back to Hampden. This routing would increase Penn Station's use as a multimodal station, and increase bus frequency along Howard Street. Riders heading further south could catch any of the MTA buses or the Charm City Circulator there.
2. Increase the frequency of the Shuttle to every 15-20 minutes. 40 minutes is insufficient, and does not allow for any chance of increase ridership.
3. Have the shuttle run in both directions. If someone wants to go back and forth between the Woodberry station from the Avenue, a rider has to go around the entire loop. For a good example look at SEPTA's LUCY shuttle which connects the University of Pennsylvania campus with 30th street station. It has two color coded routes; one runs clockwise and the other counterclockwise.
4. Have the Shuttle run more like the Charm City Circulator, and have less frequent stops. Currently the Shuttle stops at nearly every block; instead this could be reduced to every other block or every 2nd block in some cases to allow for quicker travel between stops.

 These are not major changes, but seeing how popular the Charm City Circulator is, a branding for the Hampden Shuttle could have great impacts. The Hampden Shuttle is already only $1 a ride (less than the normal MTA service), so why not seriously think about how it can be a better alternative to driving.

Creating a Separate Yellow Line

The Baltimore Regional Rail System Plan that was drafted in 2002 included, besides the Red - which after 11 years has yet to begin construction - also envisioned a separate yellow line that ran parallel to the current light rail, but several blocks east that would connect the Inner Harbor with Mount Vernon and Station North; eventually going up York Rd to Towson before rejoining the current Light Rail right of way at Lutherville. This was a very ambitious plan which looks to be nowhere near feasible in the near (or long term) future given how expensive that would be to build.

However, what about building the line just to Penn Station? From Camden Yards to Penn Station would be roughly 2 miles of new tunnel, but would provide rail access to an extremely traffic heavy portion of the city. The 2002 Plan proposed a new station at the Inner Harbor (approx. Conway and Light), a transfer at Charles Center to connect directly to the Metro, a new station in Mount Vernon (approximately at Madison Street), and a transfer at Penn Station to connect to Amtrak and MARC.


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This new separate Yellow Line would run trains between Penn Station and BWI (or alternating to Glen Burnie), sharing stations between Linthicum and Camden Yards with the Blue Line. The Blue Line would continue to run trains between Hunt Valley and Glen Burnie, and potentially alternating to still serve BWI. The short Penn-Camden shuttle would be eliminated.

There are many advantages here that would drastically improve the interconnectivity of our transit system.

1. A direct underground transfer connection at Charles Center for the Baltimore Metro, and ideally the Red Line.
2. A new connection at Penn Station which would get riders to/from Penn Station faster and more frequently than the current light rail station.
3. Serve more of the dense downtown neighborhoods which are currently the fastest growing in the city. including a station in the Inner Harbor. This would allow for
4. Remove some traffic from Howard Street to allow for better headway frequencies along that ROW for Timonium/Hunt Valley trains.
5. Potential for expansion north of Penn Station in the future, or a connection for southbound trains from Timonium/Hunt Valley to also access Penn Station.

There are also some disadvantages/problems that need to be addressed.

1. This would be quite expensive. For two miles of track and new stations the cost would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more.
2. Lack of funding. There are already questions about this with regards to the Red Line, so who knows what would be available 10+ years from now for a project like this.
3. Station placement: There is not a lot of open space for station entrances along the alignment. Sidewalk bumpouts with enough room for an elevator on one corner and a stairwell on another would probably be sufficient.

There is a lot of potential for a separate Yellow Line, especially when it comes to make a more comprehensive and connective transit system in Baltimore. Let's hope some transportation planners will think about this seriously.

Where to Expand the Metro Subway

The last time the Metro Subway was expanded it grew from Charles Center to Shot Tower and Johns Hopkins; that was in 1994. Since then there has been talk about where it should go from there. Currently, the subway is one of the most underutilized, but best form of transportation we have, and it's principally because of where it goes.

Approximately 48,500 people ride it ever day, according to MTA's annual 2011 annual report. APTA's quarterly statistics have daily ridership averaging around the same for the last 10 years. This is roughly half of the initial anticipated ridership when the subway was originally constructed, so essentially there is plenty of room for expansion with the infrastructure that is currently there. Our subway, as constructed, works best for commuters, heading from the northwest of the city to downtown and JHH, and that's about it; roughly end-to-end travel. It's lack of easy connection to the Light Rail, and no connection at all to the MARC, makes it very hard to view the subway as a part of an interconnected transit system that would allow for better point to point travel within the MTA network.

Since the MTA is moving headlong into the final planning stages of the Red Line, which at best will have a pedestrian tunnel that will connect it with the subway at Charles Center; any expansion the the metro will be years in the future (the Red Line isn't projected to be open until 2020-21). At least in the meantime, we can get creative as to where to send it.

The first idea is an extension. According to the 2002 plan, eventually the metro would be extended North under Broadway. While it seems unlikely it will ever make it to Morgan State University, let alone White Marsh. The Metro could be extended as far as North Ave and have an impact. This would be an extension of about a mile and would include a station near Preston Street and then a new terminus at North Avenue where MTA could create a new intramodal transportation center. A station at Preston Street could serve a new MARC station that could be build as an additional transfer stop.


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The next two ideas would create spurs off the the metro to serve other downtown areas. One would be to have the line split after Shot Tower Station before it curves under Broadway and continue under Baltimore Street to serve the Patterson Park and Butcher's Hill neighborhoods. There could be potential new stations at Broadway, and then somewhere along Patterson Park. This proposal gets somewhat tricky when you have to decide where to end it, and how best to connect it with other bus routes like the 13, 20, or 40.


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Another branch alternative would be to swing the subway south into Federal Hill and South Baltimore. This area of the city is served by both the MTA (Routes 1 and 64) and the Charm City Circulator (Purple and Banner), but the area is one of the fasted growing and has constant parking problems. It was originally a part of the Metro plan, but was scrapped before construction due to pressure by the residents. In this scenario, the metro could spur between Lexington Market and Charles Center, turn south and have stops near Cross Street, Fort Avenue, and then end at a terminal in Port Covington. The alignment could be under Hanover, Charles, or Light Street. I chose a Charles Street alternative for the map. The Route 64 and the Route 27 would be able to serve this new terminal. While this last option would probably be the best, I can also foresee it being the most heavily fought over.


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All of these would be worth while to study to see what would be the most cost effective, have the most ridership, and serve the most purpose. Also, since this is an extension of an existing system it would be easier to get New Starts or Small Starts funding. What do you think?

Crane Lifting

N Charles Street will be closed tomorrow night and all day Sunday between Saratoga and Mulberry for a crane work on one of the buildings, but what building? We're going to have to check this out this weekend to see what's going on.

PMC should begin working on 301 N Charles for apartment conversion in the near future, but I can't imagine that this weekend is related to that project. There are a lot of exciting things going on in downtown.