Red Line investment doesn’t make economic sense | READER COMMENTARY

Investing billions of dollars in transit doesn't make much sense if people don't use it.

In a recent column, Dan Rodricks writes that “One of the great obstacles to developing political will for more mass transit is that politicians, particularly those who represent the suburbs and rural areas, never take a bus” (“Dan Rodricks: Hogan, Alsobrooks and the politics of Red Line revival,” June 14). Let us not forget that we voters elect these politicians and only 28% of Marylanders showed up for the recent primary.

Even fewer of us take transit. In Baltimore, fewer than 10% of daily trips are via transit. For the Baltimore region, it is less than 3%. So yes, suburbanites hardly use transit. But then city dwellers are not big transit users either. Despite continuing construction of new transit fixed guideway systems, U.S. transit ridership is only back to about 75% of what it was prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet national highway travel measured in vehicle miles traveled now exceeds the 2019 pre-pandemic travel. This growth is occurring despite widespread adoption of remote work policies.

But transit is not back and in my opinion won‘t be. Our governments spent several years telling us that we needed to wear facemasks and avoid people. I once rode the MTA bus between Cromwell and Annapolis and listened to a video loop that cautioned me on being around people. So I’m to ride the bus, but need to avoid people? We have taken much of the “mass” out of mass transit! In all economic strata, people in and out of the city simply support transit to help get others off of their roads.

Rodricks says that Gov. Larry Hogan’s decision to cancel further work on the Red Line was a “diss” to the city and “demoralizing for a city struggling to come out of the smoke of the April uprising.” Haven’t Baltimore’s problems been growing for a long time? The city’s population peaked at 950,000 in 1950 and has steadily fallen to 583,000 in 2020. Anne Arundel County at 588,000 is now more populous than Baltimore. Educationally, city schools tested 8.7% proficient on the grade 8 science test, worst in Maryland, and scored 25% proficient on language arts in grades 3-8 tests.

Environmentally, both of the city’s sewage treatment plants have a history of raw sewage overflows due to poor operations and management practices. Violent crime in Baltimore is many times that of Anne Arundel County. And let’s not even get started on roadways and potholes. So there are reasons why Baltimore’s population is decreasing. A fixed guideway route is not going to fix Baltimore until other improvements are made and not just in capital spending.

The potential Red Line project is presented as a 14-mile east-west light rail transit line to connect the Woodlawn area of Baltimore County to the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. The current bus-provided Blue Line and other bus routes already connect these same two geographical locations. We ought to at least check to see if the existing bus routes can be adjusted to meet the transit travel time deficits identified in one study before committing to a far more expensive fixed guideway route. And what is the existing ridership on the Blue Line? Will it support fixed guideway transit?

Fixed-guideway projects have a long history of overestimating benefits and underestimating costs. One December 2023 promotional paper says the estimated capital or construction costs for the 14-mile Red Line might range from $1.9 billion to $7.2 billion. Plus, there are still operating expenses and maintenance costs to come. Think what this kind of money could do for the city toward improving education, environment, crime and roadways. And we would still be able to improve the existing bus infrastructure to improve travel times for riders.

Let’s start thinking about cost effectiveness. In 2022, the last year for which data was submitted to the Federal Transit Administration, the MTA reported the following operating costs (no capital) per unlinked trip: $10.71 for heavy rail, $8.88 for light rail and $5.31 for bus. Without taking capital costs into account, a trip by heavy rail is about twice as much as by bus. And a trip by light rail is about two-thirds more than bus.

Rodricks places much emphasis on “equity.” To me, that means funding more bus trips to get people to jobs, training, shopping and health care, not a more expensive heavy rail or light rail route in a city that likely will further lose population due to its failure to educate its future generation and adequately protect its residents. But given that President Joe Biden, Gov. Wes Moore, a majority of the Maryland General Assembly and city government leadership are all of the same political party, I fully expect that partisans will go with a far more costly Red Line than to raise up lower income residents.

— John Spencer, Pasadena

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