Part 4: Future Plans: Regional Rail System

For years, plans have been made for another Regional Rail System, similar to the one planned in the early 1960's. Most of us have heard about the plans for the Red Line, an East-West Line that would connect East and West Baltimore to Downtown, connecting near the Light Rail and Metro. However, since 2002 there have been plans for a more complete system. The Central Maryland Transportation Alliance wants to extend the metro line further to Morgan State University, White Marsh, and Middle River, as well as add another line connecting Columbia with Baltimore, with that line running north through centrail Baltimore, providing transportation to the Johns Hopkins, Loyola and Towson Universities, eventually linking back up with the Light Rail line in Timonium and Hunt Valley.

This is the map of the proposed lines, courtesy of the CMTA.

The new lines and extentions would help link the lines together more, providing transfer points between lines, and even linking up with existing MARC stops.



According to an article in the Baltimore Sun, the CMTA is trying to push the yellow line ahead of an extention to the current Metro system into White Marsh. They argue that the yellow line to Columbia and Towson is most likely to forge a culture of transit, whereas other lines are less likely to provide opportunities for redevoloping the city. The yellow line is proposed to go through Johns Hopkins, Loyola and Towson Universities, offer students without transportation a way to get around the city easier.

Though plans have been made, seeing any of these lines become a reality will take several years. According to The Transport Politic, the Red Line could be operational by 2016, though that could easily be extended. Without support from the residents of Canton in Baltimore, this project could either be blocked or delayed very easily.

The CMTA wants us to "Imagine a Regional, Rapid and Reliable Transit System that spurs Economic Growth, creates Equitable Access and ensures Environmental Protection." This is a great plan, and though it sounds fantastic

Beyond the Red Line, the Green Line extention or Yellow Line could take many more years. Baltimore may finally see another transportation system that serves the metropolitan area like the old streetcars, but if the next few decades are anything like the last few, delays will be in the future. With any luck, we will once again see a regional rail system and a thriving Baltimore City.

Part 3: Metro and Light Rail: New Rail Systems

Metro:

Not long after the streetcars starting disappearing, people were starting to plan new modes of transportation. According to the MTA website, In 1963 the General Assembly formed the Metropolitan Transit Authority, or MTA, and charged them with overseeing the public transit for the Baltimore metro area. Though this may not have been the beginning of the rail systems we know today, it helped foster the plans that would eventually come into fruition. Many people involved with the MTA wanted to see a rail transit system, but needed to come up with a better, faster form that could compete with the speed and ease of buses.

Serious planning for a regional rail system started in 1968 according to the research of Scott Kozel, with a study that was looking at the enginerring and economic feasability of a new rapid rail system. The proposed answer was what they called Baltimore Regional Rapid Transit System, or BRRTS, which sounds very similar to what the Bay Area of San Francisco has name BART. The layout of the lines was similar to the DC metro system that was in planning around the same time as well.

Above is a map of the original planned routes for the BRRTS. This map was released in the summer of 1968. Photo courtesy of Scott Kozel of Roads to the Future.

Though many people thought this was the solution to the mass transit problem, lack of funding cut the budget and the project would have to be ammended. In 1971 the plan was eventually refined to a much smaller system that contained only two lines, which were similar to the Metro and Light Rail lines we currently have. Hopeful that this would only be the beginning, it was renamed Phase 1.

Later that year, the MDOT Mass Transit Administration officially recommended the Phase 1 Plan. However, the project was stopped once again according to Kozel, this time due to local opposition from residents of Anne Arundel County. Many suburbanites were concerned that public transportation from the city to the suburbs would bring crime with it.

When the plan was finally put into motion, it only included the northern line to the Reisterstown area. A groundbreaking ceremony was held in 1974, but according to Urban Rail real construction did not begin until 1976. The first section, from Downtown to Reisterstown Plaza was finally opened in 1983. This was the first time in twenty years that a public transportation option other than buses was offered in Baltimore. In 1987 the line was extended further north to serve more Baltimore County residents. In 1994 the line was extended on the other end to reach the Johns Hopkins Hospital in East Baltimore.

Pictured above is a Baltimore Metro car in underground station for Lexington Market. Photo courtesy of Bob Barrows for UrbanRail.Net

Light Raill:

Once the Metro System was underway, other groups started looking at more transportation options to serve their communities better. In 1980, the North Corridor Transit Study began looking for commuter options for residents of the Timonium and Hunt Valley areas. After looking at rail and bus options, the plan was set for a light rail line running from the Timonium area to Downtown Baltimore.

According to the Maryland MTA Light Rail profile, the Senate approved funding for the Light Rail on March 6, 1989. Attitudes must have changed over the course of a few years, because that same year Anne Arundel County agreed to let construction begin. The Light Rail was slated to begin construction from Timonium through Dowtown, to Glen Burnie in Anne Arundel County. This first 22.5 mile section of the line was opened in 1992.

Above is a picture of the Light Rail passing through Downtown Baltimore. Photo Courtesy of UrbanRail.Net

Plans for three extentions were in the works, and construction was underway by 1995. In September of 1997 the first extention from Timonium to Hunt Valley was finished. The other two additions were extentions into Penn Station and BWI Airport, making it much easier to connect with other trains or Planes.

The Metro and Light Rail have been serving the Baltimore Metro area for over a decade now, but it is the opinion of many that we still do not have the transit system we need.

Part 2: Buses: Freewheeling Era

Buses have been driving around Baltimore for close to 100 years. Helton says on page 33 that the first motorized buses hit the streets of Baltimore in 1915, in response to hundreds of independent jitney drivers.

When National City Lines bought out the Baltimore Transit Company in 1946, more buses started showing up on the streets to replace some of the routes where streetcars were disappearing. The first buses to have large numbers hit the streets were GM diesel and ACR Brill gasoline buses, according to page 85 of Baltimore's Streetcars and Buses.

Above is an "old-look" GM bus, which were the dominant bus in Baltimore, and what may consider to be the classic city bus. GM revealed their "new-look" bus in the early 60's. Photo courtesy of the Baltimore Transit Archives.

Above is the ACF Brill gasoline bus that was widely seen in the first few decades after WWII. Photo courtesy of the Baltimore Transit Archives.

The Baltimore Transit Company was in charge of operation of the buses even after the streetcars had left streets. Gary Helton explains on page 85 that they regained control of them until April 30, 1970, when control was assumed by the State run Mass Transit Administration. The BTC was finally liquidated five years later in 1975.

Pictured above is the replacement for the GM old-look and ACF buses. This is a GM new-look or "fishbowl" bus. This bus is important in Baltimore because the new shipments of these were ordered to replace the last of the streetcars. Photo courtesy of the Baltimore Transit Archives.

The new buses conformed to the culture of automobiles and suburbanization better than streetcars. Not having fixed routes, they had more routes. They could also be operated on the newly planned roadways in downtown Baltimore, unlike streetcars that ran on tracks. Buses could also get to suburbs quicker than streetcars, so they were more appealing to many of the vehicle-less people commuting from a suburb into the city. In the post-war era when so many highways were being built, more and newer buses seemed like the obvious choice to most.

Buses dominated Baltimore mass transit for decades. Buses were the only form of mass transportation in Baltimore from the time of the last trolley in 1963 until a new metro system was opened twenty years later in 1983.

Buses have been the lasting form of transportation through the ups and down of other forms. They were originally considered to be much faster and more comfortable than streetcars, and even today with other options available, buses are not in short supply.

Part 1: Streetcars: The Golden Age

The Streetcar has a long history with Baltimore. The first electric railway to see regular usage was in Baltimore. According to Kenneth Jackson on page 107 in his book Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, it was first tested August 5, 1885 by Leo Daft. The test was successful, and the line began regular usage on August 10 according to a plaque that was located at the Oak Street car house.

Baltimore was also home to another first. According to Gary Helton on page 104 of his book Baltimore's Streetcars and Buses, Baltimore boasted the first elevated electric railway in America, which began construction in 1893.

Above is a typical Baltimore streetcar from the mid 1950's. The one pictured ran on like #26 on Dundalk Avenue. Photo Courtesy of the Baltimore Transit Company Archives.

Streetcars had served Baltimore for more than 50 years by the time WWII was ending. During the war, the Baltimore Transit company saw ridership peak. More people than ever were taking a streetcar to work, most to places like the Bethlehem steel yard in Sparrows Point and the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft plant in Middle River. The surge in ridership heavily taxed the resources of the BTC according to page 84 of Helton's book. The wartime boom had helped give the streetcars one last shot.

Pictured above is another Baltimore streetcar, here seen climbing Gay Street on its way to Overlea. The City can be seen in the background. Picture Courtesy of the Baltimore Transit Company Archives.

However, after the war was over, a number of factors contributed to the decline of the streetcar in Baltimore. People left urban areas in droves, jobs relocated to cheaper land, and politicians pushed for a car friendly city.

The postwar baby boom economy left a lot of people, including the returning servicemen, with extra money. Automobiles were relatively cheap, and their sales soared. The high rate of car ownership took many riders off streetcars. In addition to owning cars, people that were living in the city started fleeing for more open land. Manifest Destiny and the American Dream were driving people out of the cities faster than ever before.

The FHA, or Federal Housing Administration, made it easier than ever for many people to own a home. As Kenneth Jackson put it on page 203 of Crabgrass Frontier, "No agency of the United States government has had a more pervasive and powerful impact on the American people over the past half-century than the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)." Simply put, it often became easier and cheaper to buy a house than rent one. It made more sense for middle class city residents to own their own home in a suburb that the FHA would make a loan for than to continue renting a home in the city. The commute would not be a boundary now that so many people were purchasing cars.

The loss of city population and the increase in automobile ownership in the old streetcar suburbs of a few decades earlier hurt the Baltimore Transit Company badly. In addition to rider changes, destinations changed as well. Steel plants and aircraft plants that had drawn huge crowds no longer had an employee base to help support the system. New jobs that began springing up in the post war days were moving into cheaper land outside the city, just as people were doing. The incredible expansion seen after the war made it almost impossible for the streetcar system to find riders.

According to an article in the June 2009 article of Urbanite, In 1946, a GM backed conglomerate called National City Lines bought majority shares in the Baltimore Transit Company. According to testimony given in 1973, National City Lines purchased control of the BTC for the express purpose of dismantling urban streetcars. Gary Helton, on page 85 of his book, says that this allegedly created very lucrative and long term markets for the products made by businesses involved in National City Lines: buses, tires, petroleum, glass, and rubber.

City and State politicians also facilitated the demise of the streetcar. Michael Anft & John Ellsberry clain in their Urbanite article that during the 1950's the city's traffic grid was being reworked to get people in and out of the city as fast as possible. City officials were planning for the conversion of a number of city streets to become one-way traffic only, while Maryland State politicians were interested in the rise in tax revenue from the sale of deisel and gasoline from the new cars and buses that were hitting the roads, according to Helton on page 85.

A streetcar in front of the Towson Courthouse sometime after 1948. Photo courtesy of the Baltimore Transit Company Archives.

The last streetcar in Baltimore made its final run in November of 1963, making way for the newly acquired buses that would be the only mass transportation option in Baltimore for the next 20 years.

I am in the process of putting together my final blog posts. I have finished all of my research and just need to put it all together now. I plan on posting my final in a series of four posts. Each major era of transportation will have its own post. I should have it all put together and ready to post in the next few days.

I'm finally beginning to find some good images of old Baltimore street cars, like the one above. This is a 1941 Presidents' Conference Committe car, picture courtesy of the Baltimore Transit Archives.

Research is still going slower than I would like. October is the bussiest time for my work so I haven't been able to take a day off. Things should start slowing down in the next two weeks so I should be able to get to the Maryland Room as well as see a special collection at the Langsdale library.

I do have some good information from the internet and one book, but I think I will find some very useful information once I can get into the libraries.