How the stub of I-70 inside I-695 could be transformed into extra land for Leakin Park.

Photo by: Graphic using Google Earth by Gerald Neily

Here are five places where those Red Line dollars could make a dramatic difference – but they’re not in any Maryland Transit Administration plans.

Let’s pretend the MTA wasn’t spending government “funny money” on the Red Line, but was spending your money. What would you tell them to spend those billions on, to actually make Baltimore a better place?

First, the stipulation: You’re not allowed to spend it to educate our kids, house our poor or heal the sick: just to boost mass transit.

My general idea: don’t hide the transit you build underground, flaunt it. Let’s face it, if we are going to spend all that money on the Red Line, we should make it look like we’re spending the money. We should try to give riders a little transit Hollywood – some glamour to induce them to get out of their cars.

Unfortunately, the MTA Red Line proposals do exactly the opposite. They spend all their discretionary funds to attempt to make transit blend into the urban woodwork so people don’t have to deal with it — and ultimately won’t use it. Here’s a better way.

These are the five places where I think that Red Line money could be spent to make a really dramatic difference:

1. Livable Franklin-Mulberry – If you haven’t seen BaltiMorphosis.com yet, you must go there immediately to see what can be done to heal this horrible monument to past planning failure, by simply narrowing the obsolete “highway to nowhere” to make room for new multi-level transit-oriented development. (But this is where the MTA wants to go cheap with only one station isolated in the expressway median strip.)

2. Transit-Oriented Inner Harbor – The City wants a $100 million makeover of dysfunctional Pratt St., and this could be elegantly accomplished, along with a similar makeover for even more dysfunctional Light St., if rail transit is made their centerpieces. Every tourist photo and on-location network TV shot would loudly proclaim that Baltimore is a town that puts transit first, front and center.

How the stub-end of I-70 inside I-695 could become an expansion of Baltimore's Leakin Park. (Graphic from Google Earth)

3. Leakin Park Expansion – The Edmondson Village community is justifiably up in arms over the way the MTA wants to squeeze the Red Line onto already overstuffed Edmondson Avenue. Meanwhile, the MTA is scared to death of any alternative that would touch nearby Leakin Park, as if it was already perfect, instead of the neglected place it is.

My solution: create monumental new park gateways at Red Line stations on both ends of this potentially wonderful green place. These could be at Edmondson Ave. and Hilton Pkwy. and at Security Blvd. and Ingleside Ave. (shown above), expanding the park onto land that is now highway interchanges. This would far more than compensate for some small park encroachments north for a short tunnel which could be built under Edmondson Village into the park, allowing the Red Line to avoid much of Edmondson Ave. and Cooks Lane. The MTA would have to do a lot of enviro-paperwork saying they exhausted all other options, but it would be worth it.

4. Charles Center Transit Hub – Every great transit system should have a central place where the whole system comes together, where you can go to get to anywhere. In Baltimore, that place should be Baltimore Street at a reinvented Charles Center, between the subway escalators at the Mechanic Theater and the Baltimore Arena.

The Red Line should be above ground at this point, right on the street, leading you right into the escalators. Then, whenever the Baltimore Arena is knocked down, its space can be seamlessly integrated to draw the Howard St. light rail line visually into Charles Center and the heart of downtown. (Right now, instead of this grand space, the MTA is proposing a two-block long pedestrian tunnel for riders to burrow between the Red Line and the existing subway.)

5. Streetcar System Revival – Other cities are now discovering that streetcars, not light or heavy rail, are the ideal transit mode for short trips within expanded multi-purpose downtowns that combine living, working and playing.

The Inner Harbor, Fells Point and Canton need streetcars, intimately integrated into their streetscapes – not a gargantuan regional rail line. The current MTA light rail plan has four downtown stations within a distance of only twelve blocks, totally defeating the purpose of building underground. A serious, detailed streetcar plan, commissioned by the Charles Street Development Corporation already shows how it can be done, and this could easily be extended everywhere in the inner city from Charles Village to Port Covington to wherever.

All of the above can be built for less than the City and the MTA want to spend on an underground the Red Line. Baltimore transit riders could have a glamorous “Gone With the Wind” production for a “Hairspray” price.