My Thoughts on the Baltimore Light RailLink...

A lot of "why doesn't the light rail do this or go there" boils down to NIMBYs in the 90s.

The baltimore light rail was originally supposed to be a grade seperated subway on a totally different alignment until nimbys in anne arundel cancelled it, and so the current awful alignment is due to the train being built along an abandoned freight line. It completely misses most of the population centers while going north/south, and then gets stuck in traffic downtown. (the downtown freight segment is a tunnel which is still used) It's really the worst of both worlds lol.

I rode the Baltimore light rail last week from Camden Yards back to Penn Station. Well, to Mt. Royal, the closest stop to Penn Station. Yeah it was a little annoying to have to wait at traffic lights while on a light rail. The service was fine.

In my (admittedly rare) use-case, the Light Rail is pretty useful for me. I live in Southern PA along I-83 and work in Washington, DC. When I take transit, I park at Timonium Fairgrounds and take light rail to MICA/Mt Royal (which is, as you know, nearly all right-of-way trackage) walk to Penn Station and take the MARC in. I could take a commuter bus from Howard County and park there but, in addition to avoiding the extra mileage, taking the light rail means not having to contend with the ever-awful I-695 Beltway, made worse by the construction and getting worse with the upcoming closure of the I-70 EB/I-695 IL ramp for more construction. Baltimore Light Rail could definitely be better but it definitely has its uses.

4 miles between Lutherville and Falls Road stations because the residents of Ruxton and that area didn't wan't city dwellers running through their neighborhood and they were right because at the Lutherville station they were plagued by car break ins on the light rail and adjacent shopping center parking lots and product shrinkage in the stores next to it and eventually the whole shopping center their closed.

Baltimore fun facts: Babe Ruth was also born in Baltimore in 1895! In 1774, the first post office in the US was inaugurated in Baltimore, and ten years later in 1884, Baltimore made history again by establishing the first telegraph line in the country, connecting to Washington DC. Composer Francis Scott Key wrote the lyrics to the Star-Spangled Banner while witnessing the flag flying over Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, set to the tune of a British song called "To Anacreon in Heaven". To honor Fort McHenry's role, it has become national tradition that when a new flag is designed it first flies over Fort McHenry! Baltimore was the site of the first manned balloon launch in the US! Edward Warren, a 13-year-old, flew in the balloon, which had been provided by Peter Carnes, a tavern keeper and lawyer, in a wicker “chariot.” Carnes had wanted to be the one to ride in the basket, however, he was too heavy to do so. Warren’s balloon flight began a balloon craze that swept the country from the late 1700s to the early 1800s. The Camden Line is interesting in that it's one of the US's oldest rail routes still in operation as the B&O began running commuter service from Baltimore to Ellicott City (Ellicott City station closed but is the oldest remaining passenger railway station in the US) over part of the trackage in May 1830! The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the first common carrier railroad and the oldest railroad in the United States! Not to mention the B&O's Washington Branch Railway, now along the Camden Line, was the first railroad to serve DC!

The park-and-rides, while definitely an eyesore and bad land use, get solid use during baseball and football seasons. They get packed and run pretty frequently before and after O's games. The airport line not running any express service is a major indictment of the system as a whole. All told, the light rail is just a subpar rail line that suburbanites in Anne Arundel, Baltimore County, and Baltimore City neutered.

The system uses ROW once used by interurban streetcar lines and the commuter rail routes of the Northern Central Railway, Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Electric Railway, and Baltimore and Annapolis Railroad. It was built quickly and inexpensively without federal funds so it could be built in time for Orioles Park's opening at Camden Yards, thus because of that, to save money, much of the system was built with only a single track. While this allowed the system to be constructed and opened quickly, it limited the system's flexibility, and so federal money was later acquired to double track most of the system. Station placement and design were intended to be flexible and change over time, as stations could be built or closed at low cost. However, they were at times dictated by politics rather planning, as proposed stops in Ruxton, Riderwood, and Cross Keys were not built due to local opposition, while Mt. Royal and Timonium stations were built despite nearly being removed from the plan because the University of Baltimore and a local business group funded them. So yeah, the light-rail goes through the least-densely populated parts for much of the journey, there was a lot of opposition to stations (which is also why they opted not to build one at Glen Burnie town center), and freight right of way limited the connectivity of the stations to the areas where they are located. Compare that with the HBLR in New Jersey which also mainly uses repurposed right-of-way but they go through packed neighborhoods and when in downtown Jersey City, they're grade-separated (except Essex Street) and have priority signals.

Yes, this line, mostly as it appears now, was built because it was politically feasible. It ended up being built with only state funds, no federal funds. To second the comments concerning NIMBYs along the line, those places vehemently opposed a station in that area, citing crime (but there's always more to that, so to say). I believe the interurban line they used for this section used to have a station there. The term "Loot Rail" came to be used derisively to describe it in places where it did run (no matter what the crime stats have ever said.) Not sure how someone was supposed to knock over a store or rob someone's house and escape on a train with headways like that. MDOT MTA got some money from the feds in recent years to work on the Penn/Camden Connector. It's possible, but not guaranteed, that MARC may use it one day to move revenue trains between the two MARC lines. In this scenario, some Penn Line trains would terminate at Camden Yards, which would make that station, and the connection there with light rail, more important, especially since Penn Line trains run on the weekends. Trains used to approach BWI at higher speeds until an operator overran the barrier. That was like 25 years ago. Hopefully they'll get low-floor cars for the line one day, if they ever build the Red Line, which is supposed to get low-floor cars. If it's ever built. Lake Roland (and the adjoining park) are owned by Baltimore City and managed by Baltimore County. The southern section uses sections of the old Baltimore and Annapolis railroad. It's too bad we can't have rail service to Annapolis now.

Maryland has quite the unique state flag, I completely understand why they love it so much! Whether you like the Maryland flag or not, there's no denying that the Maryland flag is unique. While other states put their shield/coat of arms in the middle of the flag, in the case of Maryland...it makes up the WHOLE flag! It's the 17th-century heraldic banner of arms of Cecil, 2nd Baron Baltimore. The black and gold is Lord Baltimore's banner (from his father, George Calvert 1st Baron Baltimore) and is also on the flag of Baltimore (though the Baltimore flag has the Battle Monument in the middle which commemorates the Battle of Baltimore during the War of 1812), while the red and white is called the Crossland banner and is from his grandmother. During the Civil War, Marylanders who sided with the Confederacy affiliated with the Crossland banner while those who fought for the Union wore the Lord Baltimore banner. The flag in its present form was first flown in 1880 but wasn't officially adopted as the state flag until 1904. Other state flags I love are Alaska's and New Mexico's! On Alaska's flag, the blue not just represents the Alaskan sky, but also the forget-me-not, its official flower! And speaking of Alaskan Natives: An Alaskan Native designed the state flag! Thirty-two years before Alaska became a state, a territorial flag contest was held for Alaskan children from seventh grade to twelfth grade. In 1927, the contest committee chose Benny Benson's design. Benny Benson was a Qawalangin (Fox Islander) Unangan who was a fourteen-year-old orphan living at the Jesse Lee Home for Children in Seward at the time of the contest, choosing the familiar constellation he looked for every night before going to sleep at the orphanage. His design was chosen over 700 others, and he won a thousand dollars which he used to enroll in the Hemphill Diesel Engineering School for Diesel engine repair. New Mexico's flag has the ZIa symbol, which has sacred meaning to the Zia people. Four is a sacred number symbolizing the Circle of Life; the four directions, the four times of day, the four stages of life, and the four seasons. The circle binds these four elements of four together. This symbol is why NM's capitol is round as its the Zia symbol when seen from above

So glad I found your channel! Thanks for visiting Baltimore. Our Light Rail has its advantages. As other commenters have said, most of the issues with the system are related to the residents who could care less about the benefits of a light rail, tram or any public transportation system. Yes, there are the NIMBYs, but it's more than that. By now, too many generations of people don't remember that Baltimore had a complete streetcar system before oil and bus companies destroyed it, not to mention the growth of cars, highways and the suburbs in general. They don't know or care about public transportation ... Baltimore City lost nearly half of its population the suburbs. Business and industry followed, and a prime example is the McCormick spice company which has a large facility that the Light Rail runs through in the Hunt Valley area. The company's manufacturing facility used to be downtown for decades but began moving to the county in 1970. You would think the Light Rail would be crowded with workers traveling there, but this one line of public transportation is not convenient for most, even if they really knew about it... Since it is Light Rail and not a tram, the horns and barriers are needed, as too many unsuspecting drivers and pedestrians could be crushed and killed (and some have been) by the large trains... Service to the sports stadiums, symphony hall / cultural center, the arena, and the airport is a significant benefit, with the stadium traffic from park and ride lots in the county being very popular. (I have used the Light Rail to and from the airport, but sometimes I feel like I'm the only one.) Yes, the Cold Spring Lane station is dangerous for pedestrians, especially walking east and crossing the on-ramp to the expressway, but it's convenient (and, or course, much safer by bus)... The cash-only ticketing machine system is only "temporary", while a 14-month long modernization of the machines takes place... Sadly, the blighted area between the symphony hall and the convention center was once a thriving retail downtown retail district that began to wither away like other downtown shopping districts around the country, long before the Metro and the Light Rail were built, but the construction of both and the placement of large trains and not trams down the center of Howard Street were the final nails (or spikes in this case) in the coffin for pedestrian traffic at the Howard and Lexington Street hub, not to mention Antique Row, just north of there.

Originally the North Central Rail Line to the northern Baltimore County suburbs and to York, Pa. Nice hiking trail along that abandoned right of way now. Only 7% of the costs are from the fair-box, running a deficit of about $50B's a year in part because students ride for free because the city does not provide school buses and seniors ride for $1 and many others avoid getting a ticket. Now they want to replace the cars for $250-$300M, That plus the deficits would equal around $1B over a decade to run a line that has maybe only 1,000 daily adult paying customers. Each monthly adult ticket holders card is subsidized by thousands of dollars each month.

"Politically viable" yes. Light Rail is built on pure politics in Baltimore. It's built on some freight rail lines gotten from Norfolk Southern. Thus, it falls under FRA rules. You're in one of the rebuilt cars, which removed the "stop" button and had the operators stop at every station. They used to run every 7.5 minutes when they had more single-track sections but now it's been extended due to requests to get more service north of Penn Station. It could of been better, alas.

I can hear Miles in Transit right now, “Aaaahhh! Dots!” 😜

As someone who has rode the whole line several times, a large chunk of its weirdness is because it has done very quickly to open with Camden Yards as one of the requirements for the stadium i think was to get a mass transit connection and the line gets very busy when the stadiums are in use. Also the Fall Road station acutally leads to a very large park, Lake Roland Park, formerly Robert E Lee park.

The neighborhoods of rowhouses directly bordering the light rail explicitly told the state not to build stations there.

this seems to carry a lot of the lapses in execution that Light Rail systems built in the 1990's tend to have; no signal priority, built with austerity in mind - they wanted to deliver a transit project on the cheap and ended up building a tram / Light Rail hybrid with street running segments in NIMBY- approved industrial parks on already-owned ROW. It's something that COULD be so much better with some key plans for land-use improvements in the future. It's good that it's there but hopefully one day it can really be improved. Also i really dig the MARC connection at Camden Yards, definitely one of the better elements of the system. Great for getting to the stadiums.

9:27 Yes! It was an old rail road. It was called the Baltimore Annapolis Rail Road or B&A for short. The light rail in some sections apparently use the same track! So yes, they acquired the land through the B&A Rail Road.

Come to Phoenix and you will see plenty of strip malls with tram stops. It is a funny sight, lmao. But hey I am all for more transit!

Did you notice the fare machines tend to return dollar coins? Fun fact. Next time buy your fare with a $20 bill and see what happens.