MotoSlashSix t1_iyo9ofn wrote on December 2, 2022 at 9:41 PM

I moved here last year and live close to the Broadway station. I can't get over how few people ride the Metro. The app/pass thing has never worked for me and the gate is always just open. But I really dig it. I hope it's not dying because - coming from a city of similar size and no rail - the Metro is a great asset.

gaiusjuliusweezer t1_iypbv29 wrote on December 3, 2022 at 2:40 AM

The Metro unfortunately is 1/6th of the metro it was supposed to interface with, so while it is fast at getting you from Owings Mills to JHH, there are simply not that many people with both starts AND origins on that line.

This wasn’t enough critical mass to anchor employment in our traditional downtown.

If we extend add another line, then you add all the people with starts but no ends, and ends on no starts along the current alignment to start using it.

The light rail just has one of the worst conceivable alignments you could make in the city so it didn’t add much. But we could also allow development at some of the those sites and improve things.

About half the stations are just unused parking lots on the subway too, so developing those areas is some low-hanging fruit that we are taking very slowly

MotoSlashSix t1_iyr9tuq wrote on December 3, 2022 at 3:34 PM

And yet, in a city of the same size as the one I came from, even this 1/6th is orders of magnitude better than no non-surface mass transit at all. I read about the original "W" concept for the Metro (along with the move from a robust rail system to buses thanks largely to GM's anti-trust violations).

I really wish that W idea or some variation would/had come to fruition. Along with the Red Line - and the obvious need for transit-based development - it seems like it would be a big help.