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Xanny t1_ix04swf wrote

Reply to comment by plain-rice in First time seeing the 2002 Baltimore Region Rail Map. Moore, make it happen! by A_Damn_Millenial

From a social sustainability perspective for Maryland's future its in the states interest to try to promote urban, car free living over perpetual car dependent sprawl growth. Maintaining all the roads and fixed infrastructure to sparsely populated areas of the state is a giant money sink and the tax revenues never make up for it, and quality of life will never meaningfully improve (just one more lane bro never works) until people can stop driving everywhere.

The problem then is that there are few places in Maryland equipped to be sufficiently urban to enable car free living. There are centers of urbanism around WMATA stations such as Silver Spring but its tiny specs in a sea of single family detached houses for rich white families.

Baltimore, the city proper, could theoretically support a metro population of up to 10 million in its boundaries without building denser than its densest parts today. The problem then is that people simply cannot all have cars at those scales, car infrastructure is massive and impossible to support, so you need public transit and support for biking and walking over cars.

You don't just build transit for commuters. You build transit to build a city. I feel like a large part of what killed Baltimore in the last century was its transit disinvestment making it pretty much impossible to live a city life in the city. Its a long term move to start rebuilding a real transit network in Baltimore proper, but if its built, and the broken ass zoning code gets thrown out and gets out of the way, people will come to use it.

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plain-rice t1_ix06eh3 wrote

Great thought and a good perspective. I haven’t lived in the city for years and didn’t see things that way. A big problem but separate issue is that there isn’t shit for normal amenities in some parts of the city. I grew up in Curtis bay/cherry hill neighborhood and there isn’t a grocery store within walking distance. I can go down to Brooklyn but the shops there are gross or to locus point an spend 2x more.

Back to transportation if I were in charge would be to focus efforts on expanding commercial rail expansion. We have a massive port where billions of goods flow. Given the right incentives and assistance these businesses would love to have expanded access. Then you could model a transport system like the Marc or Amtrak. They don’t own the lines but have the right to use them.

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Xanny t1_ix0emf8 wrote

I think we can concretely see with Amtraks performance around the country that commercial rail ownership with transit authority subleasing is a failed model. Hell, even MARC itself is a testament - the Camden line is way less flexible and has worse reliability than the Penn line, and thats because they run on CSX track. The Frederick Line is exclusively commuter with no flexibility and that sucks too.

That being said, there is no reason you cannot have concurrent transit and freight track. You just need 3 or 4 rails rather than 1 or 2, and the rights of way for rail can fit 4 rail lines in the space of a 2 lane with a turning median road.

I am definitely for expanding commercial rail lines, but I think private ownership of them is and has always been a mistake. Amazon doesn't build highways just for their trucks to drive on. Infrastructure is a public good that should be publicly owned and improved. Its in the entire state, nay nations interests to make Baltimore harbor as productive a shipping destination as possible, but if that means new freight rail is to be built, let it be built by the state and have the trains tolled to use the line so that the people can own those tracks and use them for their optimal purpose, or in cases like with modern transit needs be able to expand them to include passenger rail.

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