MLK-FMX

A DIRECT SOLUTION TO THE FRANKLIN-MULBERRY STALEMATE DISASTER

The solution: Consolidating all the traffic into the current eastbound roadway to the right, thus freeing the remaining land now occupied by the median strip and the westbound roadway (left) for new transit-oriented development linked to the community.

Nobody denies that the US 40 "Highway to Nowhere" was instrumental in destroying the Franklin-Mulberry community in West Baltimore in the 1970s. But the truly amazing thing is that, three decades later, the City insists on maintaining that highway as-is, even in its so-far futile attempt to rebuild the community around it. That hasn't worked over the past thirty years and it won't work in the next thirty. And rail transit alone can't fix it either, as every other Baltimore area community with rail transit can attest, from Howard Street to Hunt Valley and Owings Mills.

The City is still in a state of denial about the cancerous effect created by this highway. Along with the MTA, they only see the wasteland it created as a vacuum which the transit Red Line can fill (with more parking for MARC commuters). They still cling to the expensive 1970s plan to cover over the highway "ditch" rather than truly repair it, which has been demonstrated to be unworkable by the decades of inaction.

Land along Franklin Street between Fremont and Schroeder remained undeveloped for decades because of the harmful economic effects of the adjacent "highway to nowhere". Beyond is the high rise building to be vacated by the Social Security Administration.

Back in the early 1990s, the City Housing Commissioner Dan Henson proposed the elimination of the entire "highway to nowhere" as part of the City's bold plan for Heritage Crossing. This proposal was made in a manner typical of the Schmoke administration. Like Mayor Schmoke's crusade for "medicalization" of drug offenders, it was an enlightened idea, but it was simply thrown on the table. Then-Governor and former Mayor Schaefer had no temperament for dealing with such out of the box thinking, and without wider backing, Mayor Schmoke's ideas were marginalized, just as Heritage Crossing itself was never incorporated into a larger plan to redevelop surrounding northwest Baltimore.

Typical of Mayor Schmoke and Commissioner Henson, they did not even reach out to the fellow bureaucrats at the City Planning Department who occupied the same office building as the city housing department, for support in how a plan dealing with the obsolete "highway to nowhere" could be made truly workable. (That included me.)

Nothing substantive has changed. The City government still has some lone crusaders like Dan Henson, but still resists comprehensive out-of-the-box thinking. The state has another former Mayor as Governor who still thinks of himself as the Baltimore's patriarchal guardian. And ideas like the Red Line show that there is still much more hype than substance to the plans. If the Red Line goes to construction in its current form, it will certainly end up in the same dysfunctional state as the rest of our rail transit system, particularly Schaefer's vaunted central light rail line.

THE CURRENT HIGHWAY MAKES CONGESTION WORSE ANYWAY

The crowning irony of all this is that keeping the gaping, sprawling, obsolete "highway to nowhere" also causes chronic congestion on Martin Luther King Boulevard underneath it. What we now have is a very free-flowing "highway to nowhere" up above, with all the turning movements bottling up MLK down below. By far the worst is the heavy left turn from northbound MLK to westbound Franklin Street, crammed into an exceedingly short left turn lane and subjected to an electronically variable second left turn lane installed as a pathetic "band aid" a few years ago.

The City has recently developed a very cavalier attitude about traffic congestion. The City is more than willing to squeeze the Edmondson Avenue and Boston Street communities to accommodate the MTA's version of the Red Line, cutting traffic capacity by up to half, which assures that congestion will get increasingly bad. But they are not willing to mess with traffic flow as it directly impacts downtown, so that commuters can act as they see fit, to drive to the dominant downtown parking garages.

Traffic will continue to dominate downtown where it really matters, in order to feed the city's development machine. To do this, the downtown section of the proposed Red Line will be kept underground out of the way to allow the parking garages to continue to attract maximum traffic.

In contrast, the City acts as if motorists using Edmondson, Boston Street and MLK can fend for themselves. Unlike on downtown streets like Pratt and Lombard, the outer areas have loads of alternate routes, even if they are many miles away like Fulton/Monroe, I-95 and the Beltway. Unlike downtown, regional traffic has room to "sort itself out" and disperse in ways that will obscure the costs and benefits.

Technical tools like computer simulation models for traffic volumes and flows are of little use in shedding light on all this. They were developed to evaluate major regional highways, not micro-level local impacts.

Apologists for this lack of technical rigor point to situations like the dismantling of the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco, where the traffic reportedly disappeared like magic. But there, all the proper infrastructure was in place to restore balance to the urban travel patterns. Unfortunately, we don't have that in Baltimore. Instead of effective BART regional and MUNI local transit, we have our MTA vainly attempting to compete with many tens of thousands of downtown parking garage spaces which were built to be filled up. And the San Francisco Bay Area, in spite of its urban success, still has an intractable regional sprawl problem fed by the difficulty of urban movement. The Richmond-San Rafael Bridge now connects the East Bay sprawl to Marin County much more than the urban Embarcadero Freeway once did.

But there are parallels between the Embarcadero and Franklin-Mulberry Expressway. Both have served both traffic and communities badly. And while the Embarcadero conspicuously stood between the waterfront and high income communities, Franklin-Mulberry stands between downtown and low to middle income communities.

THE SIMPLE SOLUTION

Here's the simple answer which strips the inherent problems of the Franklin-Mulberry Expressway down to the most basic solution: Just tear down its northernmost bridge over MLK Boulevard and consolidate the traffic onto the other southernmost bridge. In this way, the "highway to nowhere" will be downsized from a huge fragmented Interstate highway swath to a single narrow overpass. There are currently only two lanes on each bridge, but the Interstate-standard shoulder easily provides room for a third lane. Downtown highway bridges don't even have shoulders - the Orleans and Russell Street Viaducts certainly don't, and there was never a clamor to provide them the last time they were rebuilt.

Franklin Street looking west from MLK Blvd. between expressway bridge, which should be knocked down (left), and Heritage Crossing community (right).

Eastbound flow on the remaining bridge can easily be consolidated into a single lane by guiding its second lane into the Mulberry/MLK intersection. Most importantly for traffic flow, the current very difficult left turn from northbound MLK to the westbound Franklin-Mulberry Expressway can be diverted into an uninterrupted right turn loop ramp eastbound on Franklin, then westbound over the remaining bridge. This will greatly alleviate congestion on MLK at very little expense to Franklin-Mulberry.

Most importantly, this solution will create large attractive new development parcels along Franklin Street that can be integrated into Heritage Crossing, Downtown and the Franklin-Mulberry Corridor as a whole.

New development parcels are shown in yellow. New expressway connections are in green. New local streets are in blue. The MTA "preferred" Red Line alignment is in red.

This solution is also fully compatible with the MTA "preferred" Red Line alignment (shown above), and in fact allows that alignment to work much better by creating new transit oriented development parcels. But it would also enhance any other Red Line alternative.

It is also compatible with the City's long-promised plan to build development "caps" farther west where the expressway enters a ditch, although any need or benefit for those expensive and limiting "caps" would be totally obviated by narrowing the expressway (see BaltiMorphosis.com .)

Focusing on the creation of new development value at this end of the Franklin-Mulberry corridor near MLK Boulevard is now particularly crucial because of the Social Security Administration's recent decision to vacate its huge complex which is the essential link between here and downtown.

Tapping into the economic energy of downtown and maximizing the value and benefit from redeveloping the Social Security complex is the key to activating the Franklin-Mulberry corridor. The MTA Red Line plan doesn't even attempt to do this. It only proposes one transit station in the entire highway corridor, in the median strip between Carey and Calhoun Streets, about seven blocks west of MLK Boulevard, which would eventually be underneath a proposed cap. Another station would be located along MLK to the south, but the nearly block-long width of the existing dual-bridge expressway would prevent this from serving any new development in the expressway corridor, just as it is already a major impediment to activity and growth.

An additional Red Line station, located just west of MLK Boulevard at the same grade as Franklin Street and the Heritage Crossing community, would be a perfect way for transit to contribute to this revitalization. The elevation changes created by the ditch itself would not be a factor, as these do not begin until several blocks from this point west of Fremont Avenue. All that is necessary is to get rid of the expressway bridge that separates the Red Line from Franklin Street.

Proposed expansion of Heritage Crossing, shown in yellow, across Franklin Street toward the Red Line (to the left) and across MLK Boulevard toward the Social Security Administration Building (to the right).

Such a solution satisfies all the goals that Housing Commissioner Dan Henson must have had in mind when he proposed knocking down the Franklin-Mulberry Expressway to extend Heritage Crossing, and to jump-start further development throughout the corridor. It was easy for him to simply call for the destruction of the entire highway and ditch in order to begin anew, but by making such a sweeping proposal, he ended up getting nothing done. It is far better to focus on that part of a problem which is the greatest impediment, rather than a blanket attack (which is probably also why drug abuse is still such a pervasive problem.)

To satisfy our goals, we need to look at all aspects of the relationships between the city, transportation and other systems to identify the highest priorities for change.

MTA vs LHF Plans

MTA "PREFERRED" RED LINE ALTERNATIVE 4C

VS. THE "LOW HANGING FRUIT" PLAN

The MTA Red Line philosophy is "one size fits all". And if the shoe doesn't fit, the MTA will spend hundreds of millions of dollars extra to bury as much of the line as they think they might afford so no one has to look at it. If the crammed-in lines don't connect, they'll build yet another tunnel to make people walk between them. Then they'll cram the rest of the line through the communities that they can't afford to bury, whether anyone likes it or not.

The "Low Hanging Fruit" philosophy is a total opposite: Build a rail transit system that fits its environment, so that people will orient their lives to it. Take advantage of the opportunities that have already been planned to make the city more livable, and bring those plans into harmony with the rail transit system. Build transit to transform the city, not to cram it through.

By taking maximum advantage of existing infrastructure and building to a scale suitable to the environment, the entire Low Hanging Fruit plan would cost approximately the same as the MTA's $1.6 billion "preferred" Red Line plan. Since much of the LHF plan incorporates projects that are already being planned outside the Red Line anyway, the true comparative cost would actually be much less. Place to place, here's how the MTA's "preferred" Red Line plan compares with the "Low Hanging Fruit Plan":

DOWNTOWN

MTA PLAN - Downtown is the centerpiece and most expensive part of the MTA's "preferred" Red Line plan. Here they plan to bury the Red Line under Downtown's biggest and baddest traffic sewer, Lombard Street (shown above), which will remain as auto-dominated as ever, hostile to pedestrians and lined with wall-to-wall parking garages. Three stations are proposed here, with a fourth dropped for cost reasons. Construction will be very disruptive.

The transformation of Lombard Street will be limited only to new stairs, escalators and elevators to access these underground stations, and perhaps several new pedestrian spaces such as the one currently being rebuilt at the base of the former USF&G/Legg Mason tower at Light Street. The Red Line will be two blocks away from the existing subway under Baltimore Street, so the MTA intends to build a pedestrian tunnel under Light Street, with a moving belt sidewalk to enable riders to get from one isolated station to the other.

LHF PLAN - This plan will avoid hundreds of millions of dollars and years of construction disruption by having the Red Line share the existing Metro subway tunnel under Eutaw and Baltimore Streets. Transfers from one line to the other can then be made at any station simply by stepping off the train onto the platform.

Baltimore Street carries far less traffic than Lombard, so it can be suitably redesigned to become a livable urban street. It is also sufficiently wide at the critical locations, such as the Charles Center subway entrance shown above, to accommodate design creativity and traffic flow simultaneously.

The three key blocks are between Howard and Charles. The west end adjacent to the Baltimore Arena is already being used as a low-rent impromptu transit hub. The other two blocks can be transformed in concert with the renewal of Charles Center, especially the vacant Mechanic Theater adjacent to the Metro Station entrance (shown above), which provides sufficient room away from traffic flow to accommodate transit and people-oriented activities.

One potential concept for this portion of Baltimore Street is to build a short spur from the Howard Street light rail line to the Charles Center Metro entrance. In that way, the entire rail transit system would converge at a single point, which is the overall goal of all but the very largest successful urban rail transit systems.

All this can be done without the cost and disruption of new tunneling.

NORTH CHARLES STREET CORRIDOR

MTA PLAN - The MTA Red Line does not include Charles Street or any north-south corridor. The MTA has kept an arms length from the detailed professional planning study which has been sponsored by the Charles Street Development Corporation demonstrating the feasibility of a Charles Street Trolley. This $150 million streetcar line would travel from the Inner Harbor northward through downtown, Mount Vernon and Penn Station (Station North) to Charles Village, Hopkins University and Tuscany-Canterbury. The primary stipulation the MTA has made is that the $150 million Charles Street Trolley project not usurp any federal funding away from their Red Line.

LHF PLAN - The CSDC Charles Street Trolley plan should be planned as an integral part of the region's rail plan, and not just as a mere "circulator", both by intimately orienting it to Red and Green Lines downtown at the Charles Center Metro station (shown above), and also by making it part of a comprehensive streetcar network centered on the Inner Harbor. It should collaborate, rather than compete, with the Red Line for federal funding. If planned properly, it would dramatically increase the "reach" of the entire system.

INNER HARBOR

MTA PLAN - The Red Line would not serve the Inner Harbor, except through the back basement door at Lombard Street.

LHF PLAN - The photo above shows how the current Charles Street trolley plan might look in the Inner Harbor. However, we can do much better. The City is already planning to spend about $100 million to transform and rebuild Pratt Street and relocate intersecting Light Street adjacent to the Inner Harbor to create a totally new environment. This is a perfect opportunity to upgrade the streetcar plan to fully integrate it with the street plans, providing exclusive rights-of-way for streetcars on both streets. As the front door and most prominent window on the city, the Inner Harbor streets should fully become people and transit-oriented places instead of urban speedways.

The streetcar line would run in both directions along Pratt Street from Charles to Pier 5, and then through Pier 5 to Eastern Avenue and/or a new bridge to Fleet Street and Harbor East. The Light Street branch of the streetcar system would run the length of the Inner Harbor to the Science Center at Key Highway.

HARBOR EAST AND FELLS POINT

MTA PLAN - The Red Line would remain in a tunnel and would have two stations, one between Central Avenue and Eden Street to the east of Harbor East, and the other under Broadway in Fells Point.

LHF PLAN - The line would be similar to MTA surface street Alternative 4A, but with a crucial difference. Since it would operate as single vehicle streetcars instead of multi-vehicle block long trains, it would be able to easily run in the existing traffic lanes (e.g. eastbound on Eastern Avenue and westbound on Fleet Street). The streetcars would also need station stops of only about 60 feet long, about the same as bus stops, instead of stations occupying entire blocks in order to accommodate four car light rail trains.

Because of this, unlike in the MTA plans, virtually all on-street parking would be preserved. In turn, more stations could easily be provided, such as one near President Street serving Little Italy, along with the heart rather than the periphery of Harbor East. This is particularly crucial because of this area's strong demand for relatively short trips whereby convenience is more important than speed. The MTA's own study found that their surface alternative is more cost-effective (more riders and time savings per dollar) than the alternatives with tunnels.

CANTON

MTA PLAN - The Red Line would emerge from the ground at a large portal built into an enlarged median strip onto Boston Street near Montford Avenue. Boston Street would have to be totally redesigned to squeeze the heavy traffic into a single lane in each direction to accommodate the light rail line. There would be two stations in this median, one near the American Can retail complex near Lakewood Avenue and the other near Canton Crossing near Clinton Street.

LHF PLAN - The streetcar line would either remain in the existing lanes of Eastern Avenue and/or Fleet Street through Canton, or turn into Boston Street. Either way, the streets would remain approximately as-is except for modifications to accommodate the short station stops of about 60 foot length. All stops would be along the sidewalks rather than sandwiched between the heavy traffic in the median strip. Additional stops could easily be provided because of their low impact and the demand for more convenient service.

HIGHLANDTOWN

MTA PLAN - The line would enter an abandoned freight railroad right of way northeast of Boston Street near Conkling Street. It would have a station serving Highlandtown at the existing railroad bridge above Eastern Avenue (shown above, with the proposed Highlandtown Loft District).

LHF PLAN - The LHF and MTA alignments could be the same in this area, taking advantage of the livable transit-oriented design of the Highlandtown Loft District plan. However, an additional station could be provided to serve the rapidly growing Brewers Hill community, which could then also be made equally as transit-oriented as the Highlandtown Loft plan.

Alternatively, the streetcar line could use the portion of Eastern Avenue under the railroad bridges, which was originally built for streetcars and is severely overdesigned for its present use as a short four lane traffic expressway between Highlandtown and Greektown. Under this latter alternative, the line could proceed along Eastern Avenue through the heart of the Greektown business district to the Hopkins Bayview campus. It could then be extended to Dundalk and Turners Station as originally intended in the 2002 regional rail transit plan, but which has been rendered virtually infeasible in the MTA's "preferred" plan.

BAYVIEW

MTA PLAN - Two Bayview stations would be at the end of the line in the "preferred" MTA plan, one serving a MARC Commuter rail station and parking lot around the Norfolk Southern freight yard, the other terminating in the Hopkins Bayview campus. The fundamental problem with this arrangement is that the alignment creates a very long circuitous "S" curve that maximizes travel distance and time to downtown and for the entire line, despite about a mile of tunneling into downtown. Even worse, it makes it very difficult and untenable to ever extend the line beyond Bayview to Dundalk, Eastpoint, Essex or the suburbs beyond.

LHF PLAN - The much more efficient and effective concept is to extend the existing heavy rail Metro east from Hopkins Hospital to Bayview along the Amtrak right of way. The MARC station would be located at the large vacant site shown above, at Edison Highway and Monument Streets, which would also provide an ideal connection point for the entire MTA bus route network from the northeast and east. The streetcar line from Canton and Highlandtown could also conveniently terminate at this point, along its abandoned freight branch line.

The heavy rail line would then continue slightly farther along this right of way to Hopkins Bayview (seen on the horizon in this photo). Travel time would be only about 6 minutes to Hopkins Hospital and 9 minutes to Charles Center. The line would also be poised for further extension beyond into the suburbs, with eminently feasible branches to Dundalk, Eastpoint, Essex, Middle River and White Marsh.

There would be a third station near where the line comes out of the ground east of Hopkins Hospital near the Biotech Park and the Berea community. This is a very high density transit-oriented community.

FRANKLIN-MULBERRY

MTA PLAN - The Red Line would come out of the ground west of downtown near the interchange of MLK Boulevard and the infamous Franklin-Mulberry "highway to nowhere", where it would turn into the desolate and isolated median strip shown above. There would be one station on MLK Boulevard just south of the interchange, one in the median strip near Carey Street, and one just beyond the west end of the highway ditch at the West Baltimore MARC station.

LHF PLAN - The key to the LHF plan is to squeeze the Franklin-Mulberry Expressway down to four standard urban lanes from its current width, which was rendered obsolete when it no longer was part of the Interstate Highway system. The narrowed roadway would be shifted up against the south retaining wall of the ditch (to the right in the BaltiMorphosis.com photo montage above). The transit line would be located next to the narrowed road. This would free-up about a mile of multi-level space for a new fully transit-oriented community between Franklin Street and the transit line.

This plan would have a short tunnel spur off the existing Metro, north of the Lexington Market Station, and come out of the ground just west of MLK Boulevard. The MLK Boulevard station would be located just west of the tunnel portal adjacent to a southern expansion of the beautiful Heritage Crossing community. The other two stations would be located near Carey Street and the West MARC station.

EDMONDSON VILLAGE

MTA PLAN - The MTA plan would ram the Red Line into the already crowded Edmondson Avenue (Route 40 corridor) where houses are built right up to the street. This would require the elimination of one of the three lanes in each direction on this already congested major arterial highway. It would also require the elimination of much parking as well as left turn lanes. There would be only two stations, at Allendale Road and at Edmondson Village shopping center, so much of this large community would still find it much more convenient to take buses, which would get caught in the congestion created by the narrowing of Route 40.

LHF PLAN - Under the LHF plan, the Red Line would terminate for now at the West MARC station and would never run on Edmondson Avenue. Bus service would be upgraded in the community by extending premium Quick Bus lines into branches to Wildwood Parkway, Westview, Catonsville and other locations. Station stops would be upgraded to the same standards as the new streetcar service, but would remain located along sidewalks rather than stranded in median strips surrounded by whizzing traffic. Local bus shuttles would be provided to the West MARC station, which would serve as a comprehensive transit hub providing connections to everywhere.

Possible future rail transit extensions could serve Font Hill, oriented to a possible major new community on the site of the former vast Southwestern High School campus, FredHilton and Irvington, and many points to the west.

WOODLAWN AND SECURITY

MTA PLAN - The MTA had to narrow their tunnel under Cooks Lane to a single reversible track, because of their project's deficiency to federal cost effectiveness standards. This will seriously jeopardize service reliability. Homeland security is a major issue at the stations serving the federal SSA and CMS complexes. Stations under the MTA plan have had to be located far away from the buildings for security reasons, well beyond the parking lots, which will make the rail service unattractive to those who can drive. An additional station also had to be eliminated from the plan for the same reason. Two other stations will serve Security Square Mall and a park and ride lot on the former Interstate 70.

LHF PLAN - This area will be served by the enhanced Quick Bus and local bus service described under "Edmondson Village".

FEDERAL HILL AND PORT COVINGTON

MTA PLAN - The MTA plan does not include this area.

LHF PLAN - The plan would incorporate a recent proposal by the Baltimore City government to extend the streetcar system southward from the Inner Harbor through the Federal Hill community to Port Covington, on the shore of the Middle Branch. As can be seen from the photo above, this area has huge undeveloped parcels which used to be a railroad yard. The parcel shown is part of the printing press plant owned by the Baltimore Sun. Behind the printing plant is a Wal-Mart store.

The streetcar line would integrate Port Covington into the urban fabric of South Baltimore and greatly enhance its development potential.

Low Hanging Fruit Plan

THE BEST, SIMPLEST AND MOST EFFICIENT RAIL TRANSIT PLAN - TO REPLACE THE MTA'S CONTRIVED CONTORTED "PREFERRED" PLAN

For years, the MTA and their cohorts have been accusing their opponents of trying to disrupt the Red Line process. What we're really doing is trying to make the process work.

After numerous delays of their own, the only way the MTA was able to come up with something that looked even superficially feasible was to inflate the ridership numbers at the last minute, after submitting lower numbers to the Federal Transit Administration in their Alternatives Analysis and Draft Environmental Impact Statement. While inflating the ridership numbers by increasing future population and employment projections, the MTA got rid of two stations and narrowed the tunnel under Cooks Lane to a single reversible track, in their last ditch effort to make the cost and benefit numbers work.

Thus, the MTA's "preferred" Red Line alternative was something that no one preferred during the process, based on data that was unavailable. Nor would anyone ever want to "prefer" their plan.

Anyway, the MTA process is over. I will no longer devise additional ways to make the MTA plans work. They've finished their process and have totally failed. Enough is enough.

HERE'S THE PLAN THAT ACTUALLY WORKS:

This plan that can be designed and built more quickly, easily and economically than the MTA's plan, without contrivances like the single track Cook Lane tunnel, the two block downtown pedestrian tunnel and the ram-jobs to squeeze surface light rail into the median strips of Edmondson Avenue and Boston Street. See diagram above.

1. The Red Line should use the existing heavy rail Metro tunnel that already exists under downtown between Lexington Market and Hopkins Hospital. This saves a huge amount of money and disruption and allows riders to transfer between the two lines by stepping on a platform instead of walking through a two block tunnel.

2. To the west, a short tunnel spur should be built north of Lexington Market to the Franklin-Mulberry corridor, where the line can be easily built to the West MARC Station. It can be extended in the future, perhaps along the Amtrak right of way to a new town on the site of the former Southwestern High School campus and to a transit hub at FredHilton, and perhaps eventually back to Edmondson Village and Security/Woodlawn.

3. To the east, a short tunnel should be built to the Amtrak right of way, where the line can easily be built to a new East MARC station and to the Bayview Research Park, with a future extension to Eastpoint, Essex and Middle River. Green Line extension options currently under study should be preserved.

4. The Charles Street Trolley project, already demonstrated to be feasible in a detailed study by Kittelson Associates, should be built from the Inner Harbor northward to Charles Village. Since this study was done outside of the MTA and city government planning processes, additional coordination will be required to integrate this plan into the comprehensive rail transit plan.

5. MTA's Red Line study already showed that the all-surface Alternative 4A was by far the most cost effective plan. It can easily be made feasible with negligible negative impacts eastward from the Inner Harbor to Harbor East, Fells Point, Canton and Highlandtown, by using single vehicle streetcars in mixed traffic lanes instead of block-long light rail trains in their own exclusive right of way.

6. The City government has recently proposed a streetcar line from the Inner Harbor southward through Federal Hill to Port Covington. This can be built as an extension of the Charles Street trolley.

7. The City has also proposed to totally reconfigure Pratt and Light Streets adjacent to the Inner Harbor. This should be done in a way that is fully in concert with the streetcar plans, to make these streets as transit oriented and friendly as possible.

8. Baltimore Street and its surrounding environment should be redesigned to serve as a comprehensive transit hub between Light and Howard Streets, with particular attention to areas around the escalator portals to the Charles Center Metro station. A two block spur from the existing Howard Street light rail line to the Charles Center Metro Station should be also investigated. This would enable all rail transit lines to converge at a single point.

Many variations to this proposal are possible. The important strategy is to sieze the opportunities that are readily available, not to try to contort a Red Line plan into locations where it clearly does not fit, as the MTA has done.

Hilton Terminal

Hilton Terminal: The only solution to the west end Red Line mess

Nobody else has a solution, so I'll just have to do it. This plan original appeared in March in Baltimore Brew.

Now the MTA has said they need to save money by building only a single track tunnel under Cooks Lane. Obviously, if the MTA can't build a decent tunnel under Cooks Lane, that means they really can't build a tunnel under Edmondson Avenue either, which has become a non-negotiable demand of the surrounding community. But if the MTA ignores this demand, they will probably end up in court and the Red Line will die a slow death.

So in the spirit of reconciliation, I offer this plan. (I don't know why people think of me as a troublemaker. I only want to help.)

The Red Line should end at Hilton Parkway, where it will still serve the Edmondson communities, but it will not ram its way into them. Then build a terminal station/parking garage/Leakin Park Gateway where part of the obsolete Hilton Parkway interchange now stands on land that once belonged to the park.

I've sketched the rough concept in the Google Earth image above. The colors are:

RED - The Red Line - ending in a widened median of Edmondson Avenue at Hilton Parkway.

YELLOW - A multi-level structure built on what is now the north half of the Hilton Parkway interchange. The top level would be new parkland with a playground, commercial kiosks serving transit riders, and a gateway entrance to the rest of the park. The lower levels would be parking.

This photo shows the grade differential between Hilton Street (above) and Hilton Parkway (below) which enables the construction of an almost invisible parking garage in the hole created by the interchange. The houses in the background would then look out on parkland instead of a highway interchange.

MAGENTA - Hilton Parkway, straightened out and narrowed into the westernmost underpass under Edmondson Avenue. The ramps south of Edmondson would be unchannelized to accommodate traffic now using the ramps to the north.

BLUE - The existing southbound ramp from Hilton Parkway to Edmondson Avenue, which would be adapted to carry two-way traffic including some vehicles now using the ramps. It may be necessary to feed all southbound traffic from the north into this road to nullify the potential conflicts at the north end. A short bridge over the parkway below would provide access to the parking garage.

GREEN - New pedestrian and bike paths through the new parkland on top of the parking deck, leading to the Gwynns Falls Greenway shown in the upper right corner, at the Leon Day Park playfields off of Franklintown Road. Connections to this path would be provided over the top of Hilton from Harlem Avenue (shown, upper left) or Denison Street, as well as inside the existing underpass under Edmondson now used by northbound Hilton Parkway traffic.

Here is the Hilton Parkway underpass seen from the south, with Edmondson Avenue on top. Traffic would be consolidated into the road going through the left tunnel, and the right side would be renovated for pedestrians and bikes. If Edmondson Avenue can be widened sufficiently, a stairway up to the transit station in the Edmondson median could be provided.

This photo shows the gorgeous Gwynns Falls Valley which is now all but invisible and inaccessible to the community because of the interchange. The new pathway from Hilton/Edmondson to the Greenway Trail would be just to the left of this photo and the railroad tracks.

Implementing this plan would enable the Red Line to work with the community instead of tearing it apart. It would also save a ton of money compared with what the MTA wants to do (a squeezed force-fed unworkable Red Line), and two tons of money compared to what the community wants to do (an underground Red Line).

Something Borrowed, Something Red

A RED LINE PLAN TO HARBOR POINT -

AND A DIRECT ROUTE TO COMPRHENSIVE RAIL TRANSIT TO EVERYWHERE

Revised diagram showing Fayette Street Red Line thru Downtown to Harbor Point, Orange Line to Jones Falls Valley and Yellow Streetcar System

Here's a Red Line plan that unlike the MTA preferred plans, would be rather easy and cheap to build, would provide tons of flexibility, would be very politically popular, and doesn't propose anything stupid.

Better yet, the MTA has already done most of the basic alignment planning on most of it, so they wouldn't be able to give their usual knee-jerk response about Red Line plans being outside their scope. In fact, most of this plan is assembled from other people's plans, not mine (with just a couple of exceptions where I don't know of any other plans.)

The best part is probably that this is a great way to create a comprehensive rail transit system relatively quickly, probably at no more cost than the piecemeal partial plan the MTA wants to do.

So without further ado, here is the full phased system, starting with:

1 - RED LINE LIGHT RAIL UNDER FAYETTE STREET

The Red Line would be built as light rail in a short tunnel under Fayette Street, where it would have a reasonably easy pedestrian linkage with the existing Charles Center Metro Station just to the south. It would emerge out of the ground just east of this point near Gay Street, adjacent to City Hall. It would stay on the surface of Fayette Street eastward to Central Avenue, then proceed southward on Central Avenue to the waterfront at Harbor East, where it would enter the vast undeveloped Harbor Point property (formerly Allied Chemical). The final termination point would be near the intersection of Caroline and Thames Street at the west end of Fells Point.

The Red Line would thus hit all the right spots - the Charles Center Metro Station, Harbor East, Harbor Point and Fells Point. It would also miss Canton, much to the relief of the active opposition there. Unlike the MTA's alternatives, it would provide great service to the heart of Harbor Point, jump-starting future development there and hopefully giving it an equity boost. It would also cost a whole lot less than the City and business community's preferred Red Line tunnel alternative, which includes its long scary pedestrian tunnel under Light Street.

Red Line on Central Avenue thru Harbor East, terminating at Caroline and Thames Street in Harbor Point development site. Fells Point is to the right (east), Inner Harbor to the left (west). Yellow Line would be streetcars on Fleet Street and Eastern Avenue couplet.

From Central Avenue westward, this alternative is identical to one the MTA has already mapped out. It is also very similar to what was originally defined as the "high priority" route segment in their system 2002 plan, before the extension to Bayview was added two years ago. The big difference is that it would serve the heart of the Harbor Point development. And none of this plan weaves any tight threads along any narrow streets.

2 - YELLOW LINE STREETCAR

This would essentially be the streetcar plan developed by the Charles Street Development Corporation, between Charles Village and the Inner Harbor. This plan has already undergone a rather rigorous professional feasibility study. Hopefully, the powers-that-be would choose to re-evaluate this plan in the context of its role as part of a full rail transit system, but it stands fairly well as-is. However, this streetcar line should not be a mere "circulator". It should be the backbone of a comprehensive local transit system serving the new enlarged multi-use downtown that we have heard so much about lately (or not so lately, if you've been paying attention.)

3 - GREEN LINE METRO EXTENSION BEYOND HOPKINS HOSPITAL

This is already supposed to be a "high priority" MTA project anyway. The Metro absolutely needs to be extended somewhere beyond Hopkins Hospital.

The standard MTA practice for alleged high priority projects that lose favor is to just let them sift to the bottom of the workpile where it is hoped that they will eventually be forgotten (see MagLev, Downtown Light Rail Loop, Inner City Shuttle Bugs, Downtown Glen Burnie/Marley Light Rail Extension, etc.). But it should not be forgotten that the existing Hopkins Hospital Metro station was built with no facilities at all for feeding the transit system, so it is totally inappropriate as a regional rail terminus. It also needs to connect to an East Baltimore MARC Station, for which the existing Metro is far better suited as a feeder to downtown than is the Red Line from a MARC Station in Bayview.

(Of course, the MTA thinks my idea of extending the Metro eastward along the Amtrak tracks toward Bayview, rather than northward under Broadway, is dumb. If that is what the MTA believes with all the intellectual fortitude at their disposal, I'm powerless to change them. Just extend the Metro somewhere.)

4 - STREETCAR LINE EXTENSIONS

Now is the time to giving serious thought to what an eventual comprehensive streetcar system should look like. The following are mere suggestions. I apologize that they happen to be my own suggestions, and not someone else's. Please replace them with your own if you wish.

(a) Eastward along Pratt Street in the Inner Harbor to Pier 5 to the Red Line corridor to Fells Point, Canton, Brewers Hill, Highlandtown and/or Bayview.

(b) Southward to Port Covington and/or the Key Highway corridor.

(c) Northward to Northwood and Morgan State University.

(d) Westward to Mount Clare, Carroll Park and Montgomery Park.

(e) Somewhere else.

5 - JONES FALLS LIGHT RAIL ORANGE LINE CONNECTOR

This has been proposed by Edison Properties as part of their proposal to knock down the lower Jones Falls Expressway to create attractive new development sites.

Running the Red Line under Fayette Street, then bringing it up to the surface near the JFX, would greatly enhance the Edison Properties transit plan. Shifting the expressway southeast of the prisons to divert traffic away from this area would enhance their transit plan still more.

This would allow the existing North Central light rail Blue Line from Hunt Valley to have a faster and better route into the heart of downtown and to the Charles Center Red Line station, facilitating transfers to the rest of the system. It would also include a direct link to Penn Station.

(Note: A previously shown light rail connection branch southwest of the Red Line from MLK Boulevard/Fayette Street to Mount Clare and Carroll Park would not be feasible under this plan, and would need to be streetcars instead, as shown on Yellow Lines.)

POSSIBLE OPERATING PLANS

Under this system, all of the following operating scenarios are possible. Major intermediate transfer stations are noted:

- Green Line Metro: Owings Mills to Lexington Market to Charles Center to Shot Tower to East MARC Station

- Blue Line Light Rail: Hunt Valley to Lexington Market to Camden Yards to BWI-M Airport or to Cromwell / Glen Burnie

- Red Line Light Rail: Social Security to West MARC Station to Lexington Market to Charles Center to Harbor East to Harbor Point/Fells Point

- Yellow Line Streetcar: Charles Village to Penn Station to Charles Center to Inner Harbor to Port Covington or to Harbor East to Canton/Highlandtown

- Orange Line Light Rail: Hunt Valley to Penn Station to Shot Tower to Charles Center to Lexington Market to West MARC to Social Security (Note: Orange Line connection previously shown to Carroll Park / Montgomery Park would not be feasible, and should be streetcars instead.)

- Purple Light Rail Line: BWI-M Airport to Camden Yards to Lexington Market to Penn Station to Shot Tower to Charles Center to Lexington Market to West MARC Station to Social Security (or some of the above).

And the best part is: Almost all of these were the ideas of the MTA, Charles Street Development Corporation and Edison Properties. Almost none of this plan was originally mine.

Jones Falls Expressway

HOW TO REINVENT THE JFX:

BEND BUT DON'T BREAK IT

The key is to wrap it around the prison district, to distribute its traffic onto all the streets it should go to, and to allow the streets south of the prisons toward the waterfront to have a civilized environment, carrying only the traffic that wants to go there. Green is surface streets and highways. Red is elevated - southbound only. Yellow is new developable property.

Read the whole story at BaltimoreBrew.com

Click on the photos to see full screen views.