MD Gov Hogan(R) rejects Baltimore Red Line, forgets to incl. Baltimore in infrastructure map

Hogan goes off the Tracks

Rarely has a Maryland governor delivered such a direct blow to Baltimore's future — and the region's economy — like the one Larry Hogan has landed. The loss of the Red Line, the $2.9 billion, 14.1-mile east-west light rail line represented not only thousands of jobs but perhaps billions in development opportunities around the 19 planned stations between Woodlawn and Johns Hopkins Bayview, all of which represented a potential lifeline to some of the city's most impoverished neighborhoods at a time when such investment was needed most.

That Gov. Hogan on Thursday chose not to similarly strike down the Purple Line in suburban Washington claiming it could be made more cost-effective (by reducing the state's share by a half-billion dollars or so ,but demanding more from local taxpayers and the private sector) is no comfort whatsoever — not when Red Line funding from federal, state and local governments was clearly available and ready to go. That Mr. Hogan now intends to cannibalize the Red Line to finance more road and bridge projects "in every county in the state" only adds insult to injury, underscoring the fact that most elected leaders in the Baltimore metropolitan area favored light rail as a top transportation and economic development priority, not whatever future stretch of asphalt or concrete might be provided to whatever parts of the state made the governor's most-favored list.

And please spare us any claim that this represents some kind of cost savings to taxpayers or the result of an inherited shortfall. It is clearly not that. Instead, hundreds of millions spent on planning and designing these projects over the last dozen or so years have been flushed away. So has a lot of public funding — $900 million from the federal government for the Red Line. That is transit money that will now go to some other project elsewhere — perhaps in a community that embraces a cleaner, greener, more energy-efficient and truly inter-connected transportation system.

It would be one thing to deny Baltimore if this was a city with an abundance of transit options. It isn't, it's a place of half-built half-measures. Or perhaps a city so prosperous that it doesn't require public investment? It certainly isn't that either. Or maybe it would make more sense if Baltimore was not still reeling from the aftermath of the Freddie Gray unrest and the growing awareness of the myriad hardships endured in what are this state's most concentrated pockets of poverty: the near-abandoned city neighborhoods where unemployment and drug addiction rates are high but opportunities to overcome these handicaps are tragically rare.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-light-rail-20150625-story.html