By GERALD NEILY
Standing at a transit stop is always an expression of blind faith that a bus will eventually show up. Gov. Martin O’Malley has expressed just such faith in his Maryland Transit Administration in his project announcement today, that the MTA can actually bring the Red Line in on-budget as a combination tunnel and surface light rail line, to qualify for crucial Federal funds despite their multi-million dollar Alternatives Analysis study and Draft Environmental Impact Statement that state to the contrary.
This will require many millions in cost cutting or boosts in projected ridership that have not yet been explained. The Sun reported today that the first cost cutting will be that the proposed Cooks Lane tunnel will be built with only a single reversible track.
Such a plan calls for even more blind faith in the MTA, that this can be done without jeopardizing the high speed performance necessary to attract the line’s ridership projection. The Cooks Lane tunnel will require trains to travel at full speed to maintain the schedule which is called for in the ridership model, also necessary to attract the number of riders needed to meet the cost Federal effectiveness standards.
Along with the governor, the MTA and its riders will then also have to demonstrate still more blind faith in the signal system that there will not be another train barreling down the same track in the opposite direction poised for a deadly head-on high speed underground collision. There are no single track mainline tunnels on any other transit system in the country.
The single track reversible tunnel will only save an estimated $60 to $70 million, so additional cost cuts will have to be made. However, O’Malley also pledged today to extend the proposed Boston Street tunnel under Canton several blocks from Aliceanna Street to the American Can Company, in response to community protests. So that will negate some of the cost savings from building a narrow tunnel under Cooks Lane.
The MTA’s analyses indicate that the incremental cost of the Red Line tunnels will add commensurately fewer riders to the system than the additional cost of building those tunnels, relative to an all-surface line. The extension of the tunnel under Boston Street illustrates that the tunneling is being used in an attempt to sell the project, quash opposition, and avoid above-ground design issues rather than to provide better transit and improve the communities for the dollars spent.
