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Showing posts from 2015

So Long Red Line, Thanks for All the Memories

So it looks like the end for the Red Line, at least in its present form; and with it the hope that Baltimore will get any new transit in the next decade. I started this blog back in 2008, and a lot has happened in 7 years: I got married, had a kid with number 2 on the way, bought a house, switched jobs - all of which has led to significantly less Skyline blogging. Anyway, I took a look back at one of the first posts I wrote about the Red Line in 2008. Back then it was supposed to cost $1.6 billion and be up and running by about 2016. Now he we are on June 25, 2015 with federal money committed and backed by Baltimore City and County, and then Gov. Larry Hogan finally pulled the plug on what turned into a $2.9 billion gorilla that wouldn't run until around 2022. There is more to this story, but I'll leave that for another time. What it all boils down to is this: Baltimore needs better transit. The Red Line wasn't perfect, but it could have worked. The real issue, however, i

Baltimore's Top Transit Missed Opportunities

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Baltimore Sun map from 1930s The Streetcar Subway: In the 1920s Baltimore floated the idea of burying its streetcar lines under downtown with a loop underneath Fayette and Baltimore Street. Streetcar lines along Pennsylvania Ave, St. Paul Street, and Gay Street would have funneled into tunnels at North Ave with lines from the west going into a tunnel under Baltimore Street, from the east under Eastern Ave along Patterson Park and through Fells Point, from the south under Hanover street through Federal Hill.  This would have created a very extensive subway system in central Baltimore, and would have in all likelihood, like Boston, SF, and Philadelphia saved much of the streetcar network. If this scenario had played out, places like Penn Station, Patterson Park, and the northeast would have been a quick underground trolley ride away from downtown.  Metro Subway to BWI: The original plan for the for the Baltimore metro called for a spoke-and-wheel system very much like the DC Met