Red Line offers Baltimore an opportunity to catch up

Jovita Hertzberg, of Baltimore, holds a sign earlier this year on Pratt Street as part of the Baltimore Transit Equity Coalition’s rally at McKeldin Square downtown in support of the light rail Red Line. Barbara Haddock Taylor/Staff

With the welcome news of a contract being awarded to begin further engineering of the Red Line, I think we should take a moment to reflect on how monumental this project will be in shaping the future of the entire Baltimore region through numerous transit-oriented development opportunities (“Study shows Red Line would increase job access for East and West Baltimore residents,” June 7).

Hopefully, the Red Line will retain as much of its originally planned routing as possible. Additionally, Maryland should move forward with engineering the future extension from Johns Hopkins Bayview to Tradepoint Atlantic via Dundalk. The beauty of this extension is that the vast majority of the required right-of-way is already in place in a “Back to the Future” type of way. The median of Dundalk Avenue once carried streetcars headed to Sparrows Point. Passing Turner Station, the line could skirt along Broening Highway then over a new bridge to the Tradepoint Atlantic property.

At its core, this is a transportation project that will dramatically improve mobility throughout the region. An east-west transit route, decades overdue, that transverses downtown Baltimore expeditiously. This can have direct connections to the established light rail and subway lines, finally creating a truly seamless rail transit network.

With its connections with MARC commuter rail at West Baltimore and the proposed Hopkins Bayview Station, the Red Line will act as a conduit of redevelopment across its entire route. Not only will current residents reap the benefits of connecting to jobs more quickly, it will be the catalyst to bring in new residents, notably those who work in the Washington, D.C. region.

The appeal of having a quick rail link to the MARC train into work will be strong. Just what people who work in the D.C. area have come to expect with their use of that region’s Metro system.

While just about all of the proposed Red Line stations present redevelopment opportunities, some have the potential to be profound:

The Security Square Mall property could be transformed into a whole new neighborhood built from the ground up, akin to what’s happening at Baltimore Peninsula. The route could run diagonally through the center of the property as it travels between Social Security and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services with a new town center built around the station. This would present an opportunity to create needed housing in the form of townhomes and apartments. . With so much land available, additional schools could be constructed to address overcrowding.

At the West Baltimore MARC station, a renovated Ice House building would add character to the area.

Assuming the “Highway to Nowhere” is filled in and the Red Line is running underneath, the Harlem Park and Poppleton stations could be surrounded with new affordable housing and retail including grocery options in a notorious food desert.

The Highlandtown and Greektown station could kick start redevelopment of the historic Crown Cork and Seal property.

With a station at Center Place, the underutilized Dundalk Shopping Center could benefit from repurposed retail and additional apartments to add foot traffic to an area that could use a boost.

The Logan Village Shopping Center in Dundalk is also prime for revitalization. Transit-oriented development here could yield new apartments with ground level retail space to accompany the senior housing that sits next to the property.

Tradepoint Atlantic, which isn’t fully built out yet, already sees high ridership on the bus routes that serve it. As the site continues to grow, including the planned marine terminal, it is imperative that transit can keep up with the demand. The Red Line will offer the capacity to move large volumes of workers.

This generational project will usher in a new phase of growth and prosperity that Baltimore has been waiting for. It will make us a stronger community allowing us to be more competitive with the rest of the major cities in the Northeast Corridor stretching from Boston to D.C. Each of them has a comprehensive and well-connected transit network. This is Baltimore’s time to catch up!

— Gregory Spencer Jr., Dundalk

The writer is a Maryland Transit Administration bus operator.