story by ALEXANDRA STEVENS, video by BERNIE OZOL, ALEXANDRA STEVENS & ANN LOLORDO

Few weekly commuters would have recognized the parking lot at the West Baltimore MARC station on a recent Saturday morning. Gone was the multitude of cars that crowd the lot during the week, causing MARC riders to park on nearby streets and angering residents in the process.

Instead, the parking lot was filled with locals milling about in search of things seldom sold in West Baltimore—fresh fruits and vegetables.

The inaugural West Baltimore Farmer’s Market, sponsored by city and state transportation officials and the Baltimore Citizens Planning and Housing Association, was an opportunity to address a series of community concerns — and spur interest in a proposed commuter transit line that would run along Edmonson Avenue. Recently released plans for the east-west line has generated some vocal critics.

But MARC train commuters pose a more immediate problem for area residents. Read the rest of this entry »

Neighborhood Voices on the Red Line Route:
ESTELLE KENT

      If the Red Line means change for her west Baltimore neighborhood — an end to the drug abuse,  joblessness and poverty – then bring it on, says Estelle Kent.   

      This 54-year-old longtime community activist very much favors the Red Line transit project — which would send light rail cars right up the middle of Edmondson Avenue, not far from her house. The Red Line, she’s convinced, will bring development that would boost up her proud-but-challenged community. Kent has seen it steadily deteriorate, she said, since moving there from Calvert County in 1969.

     “Today, it’s nothing like it was then,” said Kent, vice president of the Lower Edmondson Village Community Association. “I hope it will become more safe for everyone around here, that it will be pretty. Right now the way it looks around here, I would not want to move here. The consensus in my neighborhood? They want to see change and they think the Red Line could bring it.”
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