Most Baltimoreans define “mass” transit as hopping in the car and praying they don’t hit traffic. Here in Baltimore we have the micro-subway, light rail, buses and MARC.

It’s a patchwork system at best, and it’s never at its best. Even with the double-tracking of light rail, the Baltimore system is ridiculous. We could learn from a far better system staring us in the face just to our south. D.C. has the mother lode — a viable subway system. Live anywhere in the D.C. area, and you are probably close to a Metro station.

It sounds ideal, but it isn’t. D.C.’s Metro is great only for direct route travel from the counties to the city and back. If you want to go from, say, Bethesda to Greenbelt, it has always been off track. The problem is it hasn’t been able to change as commute patterns have.

More mass transit is on the minds of commuters who don’t like the mega-prices of gasoline. A recent report from the American Public Transportation Association shows transit jumped 3 percent in the first three months of 2008. That’s 2.6 billion total rides.

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Politicians aren’t good with money, but they can count. Even if you divide that up per business day, it still represents a decent chunk of drivers who aren’t on the roads.

So Baltimore is talking about mass transit in earnest. The primary discussion is the 12-mile Red Line from Woodlawn to the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. Along the way, it could blast through neighborhoods such as Fells Point and Canton, burning billions of dollars as well.

Total costs are already expected to be $1.2 billion to $2.4 billion, though that might merit a hefty federal subsidy. To do that, the plan must be cost-effective, and digging underground is pricey. So there’s talk about building some of the line above ground — right near where people live and work.

Big opposition might come from people who, unsurprisingly, don’t want subway cars rolling by their houses all hours of the day and night. And that’s what would happen. It’s bad enough that they’d be expected to put up with years of disruption as the project was built.

And all for what is obviously an inferior idea. Sure, Baltimore can’t afford the Rolls-Royce of mass transit. But cobbling together one tiny line after another instead of trying to deal with the issue intelligently is like building a car, as Johnny Cash would say, “one piece at a time.” The result is a mess.

There’s a good chance high gas prices are here for a while. That means transit planners must think creatively. Do we need a couple of billion dollars spent on a spur of subway that can’t adapt to changing job locations? Or would it be better to invest in bus rapid transit with a heavily expanded fleet that could change with a turn of a wheel?

It’s essential Baltimoreans don’t get railroaded into a white-elephant project only politicians and planners really want.