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 »

Caroline Burkhart and Nancy Braymer (right) with anti-Red Line postcards. (Photo by Dudley Winters)

Neighborhood Voices from the Red Line Route:

NANCY BRAYMER

Gov. Martin O’Malley may have settled on a plan for the construction of a Red Line mass transit line through Baltimore, but Nancy Braymer doesn’t want anyone to think that Alternative 4C is a done deal.

“We are trying to let people know this is not over,’’ says the retired federal worker, a Canton resident since 1987. “We’re going to scrutinize every aspect of their application. It’s going to be gone over with a fine tooth comb.”

Braymer is one of the Canton residents who oppose the Red Line proposal as recommended because it will require tearing up Boston Street to create a portal for a street-level rail line. “It’s a pit in the middle of the street,’’ she says flatly, and that makes it incompatible with the residential character of the neighborhood and the pedestrian and automobile traffic in the area.

Braymer found the public process to be a “sham.”

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Red Line should be done right or not at all, says Warren Smith. (Photo by Fern Shen)

Neighborhood Voices from the Red Line Route:
WARREN SMITH

      Warren Smith drives trucks for a living. He’s also an active citizen of west Baltimore and passionately interested in transit policy. 

       Add all those up and you get a pretty unambiguous position on the Red Line: Smith thinks that the 4C option, especially the above-ground portion in west Baltimore, is going to be unsafe, lacking in transit “connectivity” and disruptive to the neighborhoods it passes through. 

      “We do need the jobs. We also need to do something that’s monumental, instead of disastrous,” said Smith, who is on the MTA’s Citizens Advisory Council and is the president of the Greater West Hills Community Association. 

       In his view, the Red Line is all about the business community and politicians pouncing on federal money for short-term gain (contracts, jobs, making a splash) without any thought to long-term consequences.

       “It’s about the federal money and the employment and spreading the wealth among the illuminati,” said Smith, who is also a member of the East-West Coalition Against Redline Option 4C and who argues that the right way to do the Red Line is to put it underground on the east and west sides.
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Reuben Crosland says the Baltimore Red Line will displace residents. (Photo by Amy Shelton)

Neighborhood Voices on the Red Line Route:
REUBEN CROSLAND

       When pressed, Reuben Crosland acknowledges that the proposed east-west light rail line may be good for the city (“it will mean jobs”) and that it may even be good for transit.

      But what the 72-year-old barber really wants to get across about the so-called Red Line is: almost none of that bounty will be shared by him and his primarily African-American neighbors.

      The Red Line, he says is for the suburbanites moving in to be closer to downtown Baltimore in order to  avoid long commutes and paying for lots of pricey gas.

“It won’t help the seniors. Taxes will go up. They won’t be able to afford to live here,” said Crosland, who was taking a break outside his Edmondson Village Shopping Center barbershop.
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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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