It’s no surprise in the sound-bite world of politics that the Red Line positions of the two Maryland gubernatorial candidates – Martin O’Malley wants light rail and Bob Ehrlich wants buses – reflect oversimplified analyses and cold reality.

Democratic incumbent O’Malley wants rail transit for Baltimore because it’s what his political and technocratic backers want.  Republican challenger Ehrlich wants so-called bus rapid transit because it’s cheaper, and cheap is all we can afford. That’s about as sophisticated as the discourse has gotten in this race. (Just check out the candidates’ thirty second TV ads, robo phone calls and this Aug. 20 Sun editorial).

Oversimplified analyses

The Red Line was born eight years ago, in a 2002 report from the waning days of Governor Glendening’s Department of Transportation (MDOT) entitled “Baltimore Region Rail System Plan.”  The title gives away the punch line. “Rail,” it says. Not buses. In effect, the answer had already been given before we even asked the question.

This report contained no analysis, but it narrowly and specifically defined the Red Line corridor exactly as it still is today, from Woodlawn/Security to Route 40 West to Downtown to Fells Point to Bayview to Dundalk.

The report declared the segment from the “Social Security Complex to Fells Point” as one of three “priority projects” in the region (along with an extension of the Metro subway from Hopkins Hospital to Morgan University and a new local east side mini-MARC line from the Metro to Martin Airport).

A “strong recommendation” was made that construction on all three of these projects be completed between 2012 and 2014.

Planning began in earnest under the Ehrlich administration and continued under O’Malley. The Red Line’s priority segment was extended eastward from Fells Point to Bayview when it was realized that ending at Fells Point made no sense.

During this time, the other two priority projects fell quietly by the wayside, when strong doubts emerged as to their feasibility, leaving only the Red Line.

Per federal rules, bus alternatives were carried through the entire protracted Red Line planning process.  However, this was mainly done by merely using the rail alignments envisioned in the initial 2002 report, and then evaluating plans whereby the right of way would simply be paved for buses instead of laying down track for rail vehicles.

The essential functional advantage of rail under such a scenario is that rail vehicles can be coupled together to save on operating costs, whereas buses generally can’t.

There was no serious attempt to envision how any plan optimized for buses rather than rail might be conceptually different in order to take advantage of the fact that the vast majority of the transit system is already and will continue to consist of buses.

Given this uneven tipping of the transit scales, no one was surprised when rail scored better than buses on the federal “cost effectiveness” formula and was finally announced last year as the “locally preferred alternative.”

Cold reality: No Red Line ’til the ’20s

Reality finally hit home with the currently estimated price tag for the Red Line: $1.8 billion. Neither candidate has given us a clue as to where that kind of money might come from, nor a similar sum needed to build the promised Purple Line in Montgomery and PG Counties. The costs have been massaged both up and down, but fiscal reality has not changed. Cost overruns also remain a lurking threat, as they have throughout the recent history of rail transit construction in the U.S.

As a result, Governor O’Malley decided to delay funding for Red Line construction until sometime after 2016, with final completion presumably coming sometime in the roaring 2020s. By that time, he will be safely out of office and it will be someone else’s problem. Ehrlich has said nothing to the contrary. For the most part, both candidates have simply used their TV ads to accuse the other of being the higher taxer and spender. (Someone else can sort out the veracity of those claims.)

Ehrlich’s claim that bus rapid transit could be significantly cheaper than rail have been simply based on the notion that more corners could be cut with buses, but he hasn’t said which ones.

Real reality

But here is the real reality: The reason the Red Line is so expensive and unaffordable is because the proposed plan requires all 14-plus miles to be built at once. MDOT eventually realized that a regional rail terminal in Fells Point would be madness and that the entire 14 mile length was needed to concoct a cost-effectiveness score that would allow the project to meet federal requirements. All of which is a result of the fact that the 2002 plan defined it as being a totally separate, new and disconnected transit line instead of an incremental addition to the existing system – either bus or rail – thus painting the Red Line into a corner.

MDOT has dismissed any kind of deviation from their Red Line plan by comparing any alternatives only within the specific corridor that they have already optimized for their plan. This is sort of like saying, “I’m more like me than you are.”

To most opponents of the Red Line plan, MDOT has done this by rejecting heavy rail with additional tunneling along an alignment that conforms to their 14 mile light rail plan. But it would be absurd to build an expensive and disruptive new heavy rail tunnel within downtown when there is already another one only two blocks away.

As for buses, the huge potential advantage is that any new transit segment could be used by any bus route in the entire system. There would be no need to build 14 miles all at once. So the key would be to optimize the new project for its contribution to the entire transit system rather than for just the Red Line.

What a feasible bus rapid transit project could look like

Less is more. The shorter a bus rapid transit line, the more buses would be able to use it from elsewhere in the system, and not just from the narrow Red Line corridor. This would create far more connections at far lower cost.

The optimal project would simply be a short tunnel, less than a mile long, between the east and west ends of downtown, free from traffic conflicts and tied into the existing Charles Center and Lexington Market Metro subway stations. Such a tunnel could then be used by most of the existing east-west bus routes through downtown, and even many of the north-south buses (see Google Earth image 1).

Identifying feasible locations for tunnel portals is the key. The MTA Red Line plan’s proposed west downtown portal is located just north of Fayette Street along Martin Luther King Boulevard (See MTA Red Line photo). In a bus plan, any bus at all could use this tunnel, instead of just Red Line light rail vehicles.

The only problem with this portal location is that it is oriented to the northwest, limiting its access. Buses from the south could not use it unless they made a U-turn. Another option would be to locate the portal on Saratoga Street between MLK and Greene Street, which happens to be an extra-wide street. Then any west side buses could use it (see Google image 2).

The MTA already identified a feasible tunnel portal location on the east side of downtown along Fayette Street just west of the end of the Jones Falls Expressway (see Google image 3). This is an excellent location because any or all east side buses could use it, in addition to many north and northeast buses.

Building such a short downtown bus tunnel could revolutionize the entire MTA transit system. The downtown segments of most longer bus trips would then be virtually congestion free and riders could easily transfer within the tunnel between any bus lines and/o

r to the Metro at the Charles Center or Lexington Market subway stations. A proposed direct pedestrian connection from the Lexington Market subway station to the Howard Street light rail line, an idea which the MTA has avoided, would then make even more sense.

Martin Luther King Boulevard could also be re-engineered to accommodate express buses feeding into the downtown bus tunnel on the west side, including via I-95 from Columbia to the southwest and from White Marsh to the northeast.

The lower Jones Falls Expressway could be similarly reconfigured on the east side, with new connections to Greenmount Avenue and Loch Raven Boulevard. Expressway lanes could be re-designated for use by buses and priority or high occupancy vehicles.

The downtown bus tunnel could also be shared with rail streetcars, such as those that have been proposed for Charles Street.

Asking the right question

With respect to the transit system as a whole, there is very little overlap between what such a downtown bus tunnel would be able to do and what the MTA’s proposed Red Line would do.

A downtown bus tunnel would serve the system as a whole, while the MTA Red Line rail plan was the result of slavishly and steadfastly conforming to the narrow constraints set forth in its brief non-technical 2002 report.

The difference is that a short bus tunnel could be built far less expensively and would upgrade the entire transit system far more, and could thus be built sooner than the 2020s. The Red Line could still be built in any event, most effectively in conjunction with extending the existing Metro.

In sum, the 2002 rail plan never asked the right question. To O’Malley and Ehrlich, the question is simply “bus or rail?”

The right question is: How do we most effectively upgrade Baltimore’s transit system as a whole?