If you’ve mentally adjusted to the idea of a year of construction for a Lombard Street makeover starting next month, as the Sun reports, you might want to re-adjust. If city officials have their way, they’re going to tear this brand-new street to pieces right after they finish it and plunge Lombard into another four years of construction hell. Why? For the Red Line.

The City government and Greater Baltimore Committee business group have both chosen the Red Line underneath Lombard Street as their preferred downtown transit alternative. If all goes according to schedule, this construction would begin in 2012 and be completed by 2016.

Many may recall the construction disruption for the existing subway under Baltimore Street which took place over three decades – the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Construction in the late 1970s and early 1980s was centered upon a Charles Center station between Calvert and Hanover Streets, while construction for a Shot Tower station from Gay Street to east of President Street took place in the mid 1990s.

In contrast, the Red Line is projected to have four stations under downtown, to be built in a single four year phase – at the University of Maryland near Greene Street, near Howard Street for transfers to light rail, near Light Street to link to a new pedestrian tunnel to the existing Baltimore Street subway, and near Gay Street. The Red Line alignment under Lombard Street is considered a half-way location – close enough to the existing subway two blocks to the north for transfers, and yet close enough to the Inner Harbor to the south serve tourists and conventioneers.

Other alternatives to build the Red Line under Fayette Street or on the surface streets are also being considered by the Maryland Transit Administration. Surface alternatives could be built much more quickly and with less expensive construction.