Transit in Baltimore (apartments, employment, neighborhoods)

[atariwhizkid]

A trend I've noticed in the DC area that doesn't seem to be replicated in Baltimore is that the closer a neighborhood is to rail transit, the more likely said neighborhood is to be a prime candidate for revitalization. This seems not to be the case in Baltimore for the most part. Does anyone have any information on why this historically is the case? Links, theories, reports, etc., whatever you have available.

[remstone]

DC has a meaningful network such that you can get to a large portion of destinations in the city by Metro, and in many neighborhoods you can exist without a car. It was built as a regional system to service a large federal workforce thanks to massive planning and money put in from the start (and earlier than in other cities). Some of the surrounding local governments have helped change land uses around their stops. And the DC economy is in much better shape than it was in the 90s, and many well-employed people have gladly signed up for denser city living and new apartments.

Baltimore doesn't have a network, its two lines (or three if you prefer) don't really connect, only a limited portion of the population is near stops (though the lines do serve some employment centers), and the light rail is very slow downtown. Buses don't spur development, though they do spur lots of complaining about poor service, and many don't even consider riding transit because kids on the buses make the ride uncomfortable / white people won't ride with black people / something else. The light rail was a somewhat rushed job in a poor alignment to spur revitalization, the mayor of the time later said as much. Though there were some plans from the early Metro days for expanding the system they never came to fruition / the money never showed up, and planning for new lines continues to be very difficult. So briefly, unless you live somewhere in the northwest and work downtown or at Hopkins Hospital, or unless you live near the light rail and want to go to a ball game, you probably don't think much about using rail here. More technically, there aren't enough source:destination pairs in the area that are well-served by transit (bus doesn't count).

Historically we've had suburban communities fight to keep transit out of their areas, and complain that criminals will just use the light rail to come steal from them. I'm not familiar enough with primary sources (other than the insanity on Sun message boards) - perhaps look around the same time Bob Ehrlich's career was getting rolling in opposition to MTO ('93-'94) and you'll find some good source material on what the counties thought of the the city and light rail. Ruxton managed to prevent a stop, even though the line goes right through the area. Wait, I found these amusements:

Articles about Rail Line - Baltimore Sun - Page 4

Parts of Canton today are fighting to keep the new Red Line out of their area, some want it underground, and some just want it on another street so it won't affect their precious car travel. And historically this city has been very accomodating to car drivers and to downtown business owners who ask for more parking. O'Malley (and I imagine Schmoke, though he was before my time here) said nice things about transit but consistently helped build more parking garages downtown. Lombard St. is a particular disaster in that regard, even though the Metro line is a block away on Baltimore St. Since the transit network is so weak the residents get used to driving everywhere anyways. It's a reinforcing cycle.

There are a few decent (re)developments planned around transit stops now, and if/when the Red Line comes there should be several more decent opportunities. The city has rolled out a bus Circulator service partly to pioneer potential streetcar (?) lines, and partly because MTA bus service is so disappointing in these corridors. But even if it all gets done it still won't be much in comparison to DC, and we probably need to stabilize and densify several more central city neighborhoods before we have enough of an "urban" population such that transit proximity is a big factor in further development.