In 2022, Maryland’s new Governor Moore ran on a platform that prominently featured the promise of “Getting the Red Line Done” in Baltimore - referring to the concept of a new east-west public transportation line. There was already an approved plan for a light rail line from a decade ago that was cancelled by former Governor Hogan before construction could begin - a plan which engineers now estimate would be a $6 billion project if built today, including a $3 billion tunnel under the city’s downtown. And that route was such that this old project would have effectively connected to none of the city’s currently-existing rail infrastructure - either light or heavy rail.

For perspective on that $6 billion cost, Amtrak’s Douglass/B&P Tunnel project - creating an entirely new tunnel system under West Baltimore for the national carrier’s busiest Northeast Corridor lines - is currently listed as a $6 Billion project. And it took Amtrak 50 years to find that money, and a special unicorn series of events including having “Amtrak Joe” in the White House. To conceive of finding that level of funding today for Baltimore in a federally-constrained, divided-government budgetary environment is bordering on fantasy. There has to be a better, more realistically way to build an east-west rail line in Baltimore, and Smart Line is that way.

Built in discrete phases, as a program of projects rather than one big project, with eligibility preserved for future funding at each step of the way, allows Baltimore’s east-west line to be completed the same way as Washington’s tremendously-successful subway system - one swallowable piece at a time. The first piece of Smart Rail for instance (Phase 1 - from the West Baltimore MARC Station to Hopkins Hospital) would be about a $1 billion project, and could be constructed with just $200 million allocations each year for five years by the State legislature.

Making a good plan (as Smart Line is) and then sticking to it over decades is what it will really take to get a comprehensive and highly-functional rapid transit system (not just one line) in the ground connecting Baltimore.

Parts of the plan (and route) have been studied in the last few decades by the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT). Indeed, as late as 2022, in MDOT’s East-West Corridor Feasibility Study, certain parts of the route laid out here were evaluated (and received quite favorably by the public).

But much of this plan is new - including not only some new alignments for parts of the route, but, most important, the idea of phasing a build out. Doing so would allow for a more measured gathering of funds, making use of various funding opportunities as they become available, so that the project can realistically be built as a “program of projects” rather than one big funding and construction monster to swallow.

All major metro systems are built in this phased way - with a long view, and with great patience for funding opportunities to arise. Any comprehensive transportation system to be built in Baltimore will necessarily need to do the same.

Phase 1 would be approximately $750 million. Phase 2 would be another $1 billion. The two phases together would (with Bus Rapid Transit [BRT] endcap placeholders) cover the entire proposed route of the governor’s Red Line, and do so at a fraction of the price - and with infinitely better service.

Phases 1-4 built as all metro (with no BRT) would be an estimated $5-6 billion total (Security in the West all the way through downtown to Bayview in the east). This is roughly the same estimate as the old light rail Redline plan (see later FAQ for that official estimate), yet, of the two, only Smart Line can be broken up into a program of discrete projects, allowing for opportunistic funding of phases as sources become available, rather than having to find that huge sum all at once as Redline requires.

Where do the Smart Line estimates come from?

SOURCE FOR COST OF TUNNELLING

Per mile estimate: $6-900 million/mile in 2020. We’re using $1 billion/mile as a conservative estimate for 2023 dollars for metro tunneling.

https://tunnelingonline.com/why-tunnels-in-the-us-cost-much-more-than-anywhere-else-in-the-world/

(Authored by two of the top tunnel engineers in the world.)

SOURCE FOR THE COST OF ABOVE-GROUND TRACK ESTIMATES

Per mile estimate: $250 million/mile in current dollars.

We used the best, and most current, example: THE DC Metro’S Silver Line, Phase 2, which opened in 2022. That phase was approximately 75% at grade, 25% in the air.

Using the ENO Center's Transit Cost Database:

$250 million/mile

THE BREAKDOWN

(Again, all at today's dollars)

• PHASE 1: $750 MILLION, including a 1/2-mile of tunnel ($500M) + 1 mile above ground ($250M) track

• PHASE 2: $1 BILLION, including a 1/2-mile tunnel ($500M) + 2 miles of above ground track ($500)

• PHASE 3: $2 BILLION, including 2-miles of tunnel ($2B)

• Phase 4: $2 billion, including 1.25-miles of tunnel ($1.25B) + 2.5 miles of above ground track ($750B)

Another advantage of Smart Line over the old Redline plan is that it’s modular. Phases can be shuffled into any order as required - except for Phase 1, which will tie the east-west line, and the MARC, into the existing metro system. So it must be built first.

This phasing makes Smart Line a “Program of Projects” - each discrete, and preserving eligibility for future funding at every stage - rather than just one big standalone effort that needs to be funded all at once.

Meanwhile, with a $3 billion tunnel that needs to be costed out over an entire line to make the cost/per mile figure competitive for federal dollars, light rail Redline is the opposite - all the funding for the entire line likely needs to be gathered before the project can begin.

Not a billion dollars - rather $200 million per year for 5 years. That’s roughly the equivalent of one large highway project in one State jurisdiction per year having to wait an extra year or two to get funding.

Conceptually, the $1 billion figure makes sense as well, since it’s less than (after inflation) the equivalent amount of State funds that were approved but taken out of the old Red Line project and spent on highways in other jurisdictions beside Baltimore, when that project was cancelled in 2015.

And… to be clear, Smart Line is only targeting using just State funds for Phase 1 alone. It’s a timing issue:

• Phase 1 - the crosstown phase - is the most important one to get started on. All the other phases build off of it.

• Phase 1 is also potentially the fastest to completion, owing to the fact that you’re only laying track for 1.8 miles, with 1.2 miles of that in an existing, below-grade, above-ground, segregated, city-owned right-of-way.

• Phase 1 would have the least community concerns, since nearly everyone on the West Side of Baltimore agrees that whatever east-west rail line ends up there, it should run in the current Route 40 “Highway to Nowhere” right-of-way (likely against one of the retaining walls to maximize development space elsewhere in that Reconnecting Communities project).

• Phase 1 environmental approvals will be quicker also, with only state funds used, allowing the project to get started in as little as 9 months from greenlight, rather than upwards of 3 years.

• Doing Phase 1, which will likely take 5 to 6 years to complete, would then give the City and State the time needed to begin the community, engineering and environmental processes, - and funding-gathering -for the next phase(s), so that construction can continue seamlessly after Phase 1 is completed. That’s the beauty of running a “program of projects” rather than trying to get one huge $6 billion project off the ground: construction and next-stage EIS’s can run concurrently.

Yes, it’s happened before. Governor Schaefer famously built the first phase of Baltimore’s existing central light rail line with only state funds – thereby avoiding an federal environmental impact study (EIS) and its consequent delays. (Federal funds were then used for the extensions to Hunt Valley, the airport and Penn Station, and for the second track on much of the line.)

Could Phase 1 (West Baltimore MARC Station to Lexington Market) be similarly built with only state funds? Again, the cost would likely be less than or equal to $1 billion, and Gov. Moore could then claim to have “gotten the Red Line done”. Federal funding could then be used – post EIS – for other phases.

In any case, federal funding was only ever going to be about 30% of the total project cost anyway – and that’s with no sharing of the inevitable overruns, so in fact the final federal percentage would have likely been even lower. Avoiding delays from an Environmental Impact Statement could potentially contribute enough savings to equal the amount that was lost in federal government contributions.

$5-6 Billion

In November 2018, the Maryland Department of Transportation issued a report that put the cost of the old Red Line plan at approaching $4 billion. Simply feeding that number into a CPI inflation calculator to April 2023 raises the cost to nearly $5 billion. But the CPI - a broad measure of consumer prices - doesn’t perfectly describe large infrastructure costs. The labor market, for instance, has tightened dramatically since then, dropping to an all-time low of 3.4% unemployment. And the 2021 Infrastructure Bill, among other impacts, has increased the construction demand and input cost calculations in an outsized way. Construction spending is up 30% since January of 2022, with construction in the manufacturing sector alone increasing more than 100% over just the last year. So it’s not hard to imagine that the actual cost upon completion a decade from now will turn out to be greater than those CPI numbers reflect, approaching or exceeding $6 billion.

Those numbers can of course be checked by a variety of other methods to estimate their reasonableness. One way would be to look at similar local projects. For instance, the Purple Line in suburban Washington - an infinitely less complex project than the Red Line - was a $2 billion project in 2016 that has since increased to $3.4 billion, a 70% increase in 7 years, or 10% per year. If MDOT’s Red Line estimate is increased by 10% per year over 4.5 years, that would put the total, again, right around $6 billion.

And it’s important to remember that the old Red Line really can’t be broken up into discrete phases (as Smart Line can), since the biggest cost is the crosstown tunneling, estimated at $3 billion, the cost of which would need to be spread out over the entire line to make the cost/mile competitive for federal funds.

To give a sense of how big that $6 billion number is for the State to find funding for, that’s the same cost as Amtrak’s Douglass/B&P Tunnel project, and it took Amtrak 30+ years to find that money, and a unique unicorn set of events - with “Amtrak Joe” in the White House and a fully-Democratically-controlled Congress.

MDOT 2018 estimate here

Purple Line cost increases here

Government estimate of construction spending Jan 2017 - April 2023) here

Another government source that might be helpful in estimating costs here

An article that looks at light rail costs, and mentions that some of Toronto’s tunnel lines cost $400 million/mile (in 2016 dollars - or $500 million/mile today) here

An NYU data set on transit costs here

To quote the Baltimore Regional Transportation Board’s Vision 2030 Report:

“The governor. This project will require extensive State funding, and if the governor is not in a lead position with the project, it will not happen.”

Just by completing Phase 1 alone:

• West Baltimore MARC Station to Charles Center (Downtown Baltimore): 6 minutes, no transfer

• West Baltimore MARC Station to Hopkins Hospital: 9 minutes, no transfer

• West Baltimore MARC Station to Owings Mills Metro: 30 minutes, one transfer

• Downtown Baltimore (Charles Center) to Downtown Washington (Union Station), with one transfer at the West Baltimore MARC Station: 40 minutes

By also completing the Phase to Bayview on the east side of the city:

• West Baltimore MARC Station to Bayview: 16 minutes

In short, there is no more equitable proposal out there for east-west rail than Smart Line. And that’s because there is no faster way to build a high-speed, high-capacity connection between Central West Baltimore (which is 90+% African-American and arguably the most disinvested area of the state) and the job centers downtown and on the east side. Smart Line = the fastest plan to achieving true job connectivity for Maryland’s most disinvested, and heavily red-lined (in the mortgage sense), areas.

Not to mention that increased traffic from Smart Line into the West Baltimore MARC Station will likely drive an increased frequency of express service on the MARC as well to Union Station in Washington, DC. So, to the extent that equity means increasing high-speed access for disinvested communities to job centers, there is no more robust job center than Washington, and no faster way to commute there than with MARC Express, accessed either by walking to the station, or connecting by Smart Line.

Finally, there’s the relationship between getting Phase 1 of Smart Line done and getting a reimagine of the Highway to Nowhere Route 40 corridor in West Baltimore completed. Deciding to do Phase 1 of Smart Line with only state funds means we’re fast-tracking design there, and THAT is really the only way we can reasonably hope to hit the ultra-tight deadline for the last opportunity for capital construction funds from the 2021 federal Infrastructure Bill’s Reconnecting Communities program: the middle of calendar year 2025.

So, getting Phase 1 of Smart Line done quickly is, for all intents and purposes, really the only path to getting the Highway to Nowhere done at all. And that’s, of course, a key equity focus of everyone.

When the last east-west rail plan was created for the “Red Line” light rail project, communities spent tens, if not hundreds, of hours meeting to draw up Station Area Advisory Committee (SAAC) plans that would seek to guide development around those future Red Line stations. When Governor Hogan cancelled that “Red Line” project, the outrage in West Baltimore in particular was substantial. Particularly galling to many was the seeming waste of their time working on these SAAC plans.

Smart Line would honor the work of those folks in West Baltimore by preserving many of the station locations there, and in doing so, allow those development plans to actually be utilized as part of the larger planning work done for the system. And this time, with faster, more-reliable heavy rail, the promise of those transportation-catalyzed development plans would have a greater chance of being realized.

Different things to different places at different times.

Again, like Baltimore’s existing metro line, as well as all the major lines built in Washington, DC, construction of the entire line is likely to take two decades or more, with construction occurring at varying times in one specific area of the city or another. Phasing however means that only the part of the city where the line is currently being worked on would likely be experiencing disruption.

Some key notes however:

• In West Baltimore: most of the route for Phase 1 is owned by the city already, including the West Baltimore MARC Station parking lots and the Route 40 “Highway to Nowhere” corridor. So construction is anticipated to be contained and out of view for a good portion of that phase. The route has the the tracks entering a tunnel around Fremont Avenue, so the disruption further east is not anticipated to be significant. However, Phase 1 would require some tricky tunneling connections to tie in Smart Line to the existing metro “Green Line”, somewhere between the State Center and Lexington Market stops. Construction would likely require the closure there, or at least single-tracking, for up to three years. However, when building a high-speed system for the next 150 years, 3 years seems like a small price to pay for a supersized increase in connectivity.

• On the East Side, at the Hopkins Hospital stop, a “knock out” panel at the station already exists to the north, as well as a nearly block-long “tail track”, making the tying-in of an extension there, up Broadway, not only anticipated, but significantly less disruptive - with most of the construction impact well out of the way of the station and its operations.

The old Red Line plan calls for digging a new 3.4-mile tunnel under downtown Baltimore along a route that is blocks closer to the waterfront than the existing metro’s crosstown tunnel - with all that location’s inherent uncertainties about soil and hydrology. Additionally, both endpoints of the tunnel have highly vocal opposition to any digging work, so that would create another obstacle.

Meanwhile, Phase 1 of Smart Line - the crosstown phase - would require only a 1/2-mile tunnel to connect to the existing system. And the staging area for that tunnel is in an already-segregated, below-grade location along a major travel artery.

Similarly, Phase 3 of Smart Line - the inner east phase - would utilize existing subway tail track at Hopkins Hospital and existing rail right-of-ways for much of its distance, so again, disruption would be limited.

That compares with the inner east section of the old Red Line plan which would travel along Boston Street, above grade, and in a flood plain. The great fear of many residents and planners there is that the construction and the tracks could ultimately do to a thriving commercial corridor what north-south light rail in Baltimore did to Howard Street - effectively kill it.

One of the things that makes Smart Line so smart is that it provides tangible options for avoiding many of the greatest disruptions a crosstown light rail project would inevitably generate.

The specific route would come down to a number of factors to be determined in the end by engineers, planners and the community. However the Smart Line proposal seeks to use the route in the west of the earlier “Red Line” plan, so that all of the work of the Station Area Advisory Committees there could be utilized.

See the map on the homepage for details, but in general, that means that the Edmondson Avenue and Cooks Lane sections would be in bored tunnels. Then in Baltimore County, Smart Line would travel along the I-70 stub in a surface alignment. Then it would go over the Baltimore Beltway on a bridge to Security Mall and perhaps beyond.

The figure commonly used is that the tunnel is operating at 20% of its capacity. In this classic 1987 MTA video celebrating the opening of a metro station, the MTA boasts of expecting 45,000 riders a day. Yet the MTA’s current ridership dashboard has the daily ridings (including weekends) averaging around 4,000 riders. Even before the pandemic, ridership was only at less than half of those 1987 projections. So the current metro system - representing massive existing infrastructure investments - is clearly underutilized, and the biggest reason commonly cited is that it’s just one line, and not part of a connected system.

Again, the final route would need to be determined by engineers, planners and the community. But one potential route would have Smart Line continue on from the Bayview Station (built into the berm of the I-895 right of way along the west side of the campus), proceed southward along I-895, and then shift into an elevated structure above the highway median to approximately O'Donnell Street. Then it would shift slightly east to travel underneath the I-95 structure to a station for the O'Donnell Travel Plaza.

Then it would head onward to about Holabird Avenue, turn east above a railroad right of way to stations at Broening Highway, Dundalk Avenue and Merritt Blvd (serving the Baltimore County Community College). Then it would travel along the Peninsula Expressway to Sparrows Point.

The total length would be about 6.6 miles, most of which would be on elevated structures.

Looking at the route moving east to west…

First, it should be noted that the job center of Inner Harbor East is already effectively ON the Smart Line route, being just 5 blocks (or less than a half-mile) from the existing metro Shot Tower station. That’s an easy 10-minute walk or 4-minute bike ride at a moderate pace.

Second, the population growth argument is often made for why the route should mirror the old Red Line proposal and run, if not on and under Fleet and Boston Streets, than near them. But the population growth described in the Census Bureau’s 2020 census numbers doesn’t paint such a clear picture.

• For instance, that old Red Line route would run through the Harbor East/Little Italy area which actually saw a 7% decrease in population since 2010.

• And once the old Red Line route get’s to the Fell’s Point neighborhood (where it’s true that the community population grew by 17% in the decade between 2010 and 2020), the route is only in that jurisdiction for 6/10’s of a mile. Then it enters Canton, where population grew by just 1.5% in that decade interval.

• Meanwhile, Smart Line, traveling instead north to and from Hopkins Hospital through the Oldtown/Middle East community - where population was flat in the last decade - would put the track directly on or adjacent to major investments being made by the city (a $105 million tax-increment package for Perkins/Somerset/Oldtown Neighborhoods), and by Hopkins, the City and the State in the East Baltimore Development Inc. (EBDI) development areas.

• And just past those development areas the Smart Line route would quickly enter the high growth area (30%) of Greektown/Bayview, mirroring the high but lesser-growth area (20%) of Highlandtown that the old Red Line route would have taken.

So, again, it’s not clear that population growth on the east side from 2010-2020 shows particular favorability for either route.

Third, job numbers and job types along the two routes create an arguably favorable comparison for Smart Line.

For instance:

• While jobs in the Fell’s Point and Canton area are predominately service industry ones, the jobs potentially available around Hopkins Hospital, Bayview and related research-focused areas would be more salaried and long-term positions.

• After Bayview, the old Red Line proposal makes no provision to continue on to Sparrow’s Point and the massive job growth areas there. But Smart Line explicitly targets that area as a destination, and puts forward a proposal for how, in phases, that leg can be realized. The industrial area, now known as Tradepoint Atlantic, has 12,000 people working there now, and expects to increase that number to 15,000 in the next five years. More than $2 billion has already been invested there.

Finally, travel times are a critical component of accessibility, reliability and usability, and on those numbers, Smart Line, which travels in a segregated right-of-way for its entire route far outclasses potential light-rail options, which travel for a good measure at street level.

Potential Smart Line travel times to the east include:

From West Baltimore MARC to

• Hopkins Hospital: 9 mins

• Bayview: 16 mins

• Sparrows Point: 29 mins

From Downtown (Charles Center) to

• Hopkins Hospital: 3 mins

• Bayview: 10 mins

• Sparrows Point: 23 mins

1) By creating a potentially highly-affordable public transportation option of just 45 minutes or less between downtown Baltimore (Charles Center Station) and downtown Washington, DC (Union Station). One well-timed transfer at the West Baltimore MARC Station between Smart Line and MARC would likely get you there in that time.

2) By facilitating tremendous access downtown and to MARC for the areas of Baltimore County flanking the eastern and western edges of the city.

3) Smart Line also sets up the potential for future phases to be built that would ultimately lead to a highly-integrated regional rail system with no additional downtown construction.

Future phases could include:

• Hopkins Hospital to Morgan State University

• Bayview to Eastpoint/Essex

• Essex to Nottingham/White Marsh

• Morgan State to Hillendale

• Hillendale to Towson/Beltway

Yes. in fact MARC is already running one afternoon rush hour express train northbound from Union Station that makes it to the West Baltimore MARC Station in 30 minutes, after a stop at BWI. Only it doesn’t stop in West Baltimore, but rather goes directly on to Penn Station.

Why? You’ll have to ask the Maryland Department of Transportation that question. But with a new West Baltimore MARC Station coming on line, and an east-west rail link directly tied into the station, there’s no doubt that regular expresses between West Baltimore and Washington, with stops at BWI and Penn station, will become a reality.

Read more about MARC Express service, and its potential economic multiplier value here.

The Edmondson Community Organization (ECO) represents the Midtown-Edmondson (MTE) community in Central West Baltimore. And that community’s boundaries are not only directly adjacent the West Baltimore MARC Station and the Route 40 “Highway to Nowhere” corridor, but also include the MARC Station itself and its parking lots.

So the ECO has as much of a stake in what happens at the MARC Station - and with east-west rail that would presumably tie into that MARC Station - as anyone.

Meanwhile, the community of Midtown-Edmondson is currently in the discussion for the most disinvested area of the ENTIRE State of Maryland. So it could be argued that, for decades, no one at the decision-making level has truly understood the value that MTE’s Central West Baltimore community holds - both in its wonderful blocks and near-downtown Baltimore location, as well as in its unique proximity to Washington by MARC. Government investment in Midtown-Edmondson up until now has been scant to non-existent for decades.

So the ECO - with its development unit HUB West Baltimore Community Development Corporation - set out to change that investment and development trajectory and, deciding they’re not going to wait any longer for decision-makers to figure out this piece of the east-west puzzle, they resolved to catalyze that understanding themselves.

They’ve been lucky enough to team up with a gracious, tireless and deeply-experienced volunteer technical advisory group. And thanks to their work and others, the coalition of volunteers is charging forward on Smart Line - what may be the most important piece of government economic development infrastructure work in Baltimore in half a century.