Antero Pietila
2008-05-14 07:00:00.0
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BALTIMORE -

On Saturday I joined hundreds of others to hear an update on a 14-mile rapid-transit line to run from Interstate 70, near Howard County, to Fells Point and Canton. The exact light-rail or bus route — those are the options — will not be known for several months. Construction is projected to start in 2012.

As I shuttled from one Convention Center breakout session to another, I ended up in the historic preservation group. That was the epicenter of controversy, a slugfest of vocal and uncompromising “not in my backyard”-ism proffered under the guise of dubious historical arguments.

That’s when I realized that the badly needed Red Line may become another Road to Nowhere, the ill-fated east-west expressway that, after three decades of controversy, is memorialized in the bizarre concrete ramp that abruptly stops in the air on Franklin Street.

An aborted east-west line is the worst-case scenario. The most likely scenario is a repeat of shortsighted compromises made with the light rail, when politically powerful residents of Ruxton ensured trains traversing their Baltimore County village would not stop there. They wanted to keep the “undesirables” out. Other neighborhoods bargained. Linthicum, in Anne Arundel County, agreed to a light-rail stop with the proviso that no parking would be provided — again to keep outsiders out.

I happen to come from Europe, where mass transit works like clockwork and is easy to use. Until the 1950s, Baltimore was like that. Hundreds of thousands of residents lived without a car, thanks to a dense network of streetcars. Suburbanization and white flight changed everything.

The real villain was the National City Lines, a holding company that acquired the Baltimore Transit Co. and streetcar operators in more than 100 other U.S. cities. Owned by General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California and Phillips Petroleum, NCL wasted no time in scrapping electric streetcars and replacing them with buses emitting noxious gases. Americans soon figured out they were better off driving their own cars, which was fine by NCL partners.

This chronology is worth repeating because some of the Fells Point NIMBYs argued at Saturday’s palaver that light rail would not be in keeping with the historic character of their neighborhood. The Red Line is fine, they said, as long as it runs along Monument Street, which is nowhere near Fells Point or Canton.

This is revisionist history, advocated by people whose selective memory dates to 1975. Disregarded is the fact that freight trains — yes, freight trains — used to rumble on a daily basis on Fleet Street, or that streetcars ran on Aliceanna, Lancaster and Shakespeare.

These same NIMBYs accused Red Line planners of not informing the community of the plans. This outright lie is a shameful diversionary tactic. Over the past eight years, Fells Point task forces have discussed these transit questions endlessly. They sponsored public hearings; they issued reports. Check the neighborhood newsletters, or The Guide, the weekly distributed to all residents. It’s all there.

I was disappointed that even Bob Keith, a friend who has attended all these transportation meetings, allied himself with the NIMBYs. “Let’s wait,” he exhorted. “Let’s wait until we can do it right.”

Doing nothing would only worsen the situation. We have already waited far too long, with the result that no easy traffic options exist along the southeastern shoreline. While massive development continues, temporarily stalled by an economic downturn, congestion makes cross-town traffic more and more difficult.

While Baltimore has waited, once generous federal funding for mass-transit projects has been slashed. Farsighted cities that built their lines are well-positioned to thrive in the age of high gas prices while laggards like Baltimore will suffer as federal money will run out.

Antero Pietila is a Baltimore Examiner columnist. Reach him at hap5905@hotmail.com.