Envisioned refurbished harbor (circa 1950’s, via City Archives)Xanny t1_itwndl2 wrote
Reply to comment by jemr31 in Envisioned refurbished harbor (circa 1950’s, via City Archives) by Reeyuuk
I wonder if at some point it might make sense to try to put in a big dig style underground connector. Like rip out 83 at and past Penn Station and have it go underground from there to meet 95 where 395 is. Then MLK, President, Pratt, Light, and Russel, and Howard could all be complete street'd into way less car volume.
I imagine it would have interchanges at Camden Yards, 40 / UMD, and State Center.
Like it would be stupidly expensive, but there is definitely a lot of through traffic that ends up on downtown city streets.
Honestly, a ring subway would probably be way better. Put in a heavy rail loop on a similar alignment with stations for like... South Bmore, Statiums, UMD, State Center, and Penn Station. And still rip out 83 past the station cuz its just dumb. They could build up park and ride infrastructure at 395 and the end of 83 and just let people metro around instead. If it has a transfer track at state center it can use existing train yards, so the only real expense (and yeah, it is pricy) is tunnel boring, station construction, and buying the trains. But MTA is already getting new trains anyway, so like... missed opportunity. People could use the light rail to go around downtown or the subway to bypass it. As it is, people don't use the light rail cuz its gets so freaking slow downtown.
wbruce098 t1_ityzdcd wrote
People also don’t use the light rail because it’s nowhere near extensive enough. cries in red lines
I’d love to see more rail. Sincerely, East Bmore
ohamza t1_iu03kug wrote
lol West Baltimore too. The light rail is out of the way for me and doesn't really take me to any destinations I need to go. I'd love a line that could take me east...
Xanny t1_iu7k66h wrote
Funny thing is I'm in Hampden and near John Hopkins all the time but geniuses put the light rail under an interstate next to nothing. The only reasonable time I'd take it would be to go to Penn Station, but transit apps have me take a bus 90% of the time because the light rail is so infrequent its never there.
telmar25 t1_itz8tbm wrote
The Big Dig was derided by so many people, cost so much and had so many cost overruns, and was about highways as opposed to mass transit - but look at the results. Neighborhoods connected, waterfront property exposed, tons of new parkland, land value way higher. The costs seem to be easily justified in hindsight. In Baltimore, one could envision the effects - get rid of lots of round-the-harbor traffic, shrink Pratt and Lombard and President and Light, make the whole area pedestrian friendly.
ohamza t1_iu04eq3 wrote
The lesson learned is there will always be cost overruns for any major infrastructure project, but they took money out of the budget for public transit to fund it. Boston's train and metro lines are falling apart because they used their budget for the Big Dig.
todareistobmore t1_iu0zgnt wrote
Well, the dumbest thing about the Big Dig was the basic idea--what if we take an ill-advised urban interstate and fix it by putting it underground?
Baltimore's been lucky not to have highways routed all the way through the city, and while it would be great to have Pratt/Lombard/etc. narrowed, any infrastructural work remotely on the scale of the Big Dig should be about reducing vehicular traffic as much as anything else.
telmar25 t1_iu2qsv2 wrote
Baltimore is so far away from a city in which people can rely on mass transit to do much of anything, though. DC is barely there as its stations are generally too spread out. Baltimore has two unconnected lines that hardly run close to anyone in the city or anywhere they’d want to get to - and a bus system. I like mass transit, don’t get me wrong, but Baltimore needs so much more of it just to be barely functional for even a small percentage of its residents. Whereas an 83-95 link that doesn’t go aboveground around the harbor seems immediately useful to me and I suspect a lot of other people - and could perhaps be what Inner Harbor needs to make it livable.
todareistobmore t1_iu33w9s wrote
Uhh, well, the Big Dig remains a poor frame of reference. There's no direct link between 83 and 95, and all of the multiple options are surface level and tied into the traffic grid. If you wanted to bury MLK, you'd still need to make provision for at least some of the crossing routes, which would really undermine the area's utility as a park.
And, subterranean infrastructure costs so much that if we're ever able to swing it again, it'd be a waste to use it on cars rather than to build even a little bit more of a subway network. We need people to drive less no matter what else happens.
telmar25 t1_iu6gsgs wrote
I hear you. I find all those wide streets in Inner Harbor/Downtown pretty soul sucking. If only they were half as wide and tree-lined, places where people might actually want to walk. I think a lot of it is people making their way in a car around the Harbor, for me it was often Hampden or Roland Park or Fells Point to Federal Hill. Lombard and Pratt and Fayette and Light and President just get packed with those sorts of cars. A subway wouldn’t even cross my mind in those sorts of situations… for it to there would need to be a lot of new infra built.
todareistobmore t1_iu7dil6 wrote
The road width's not good, but I'd say the bigger problem especially with Lombard is that it's so barren on the sidewalk. I'd guess more than half of the street-level property on Lombard between President and Light is either some form of parking or an inactive side of a commercial property. Two-way the road to slow down traffic or put 10' of sod and some trees to take away a lane in front of each sidewalk and it's still bleak.
All that said, I don't have any ideas for how to make the harbor a more functional neighborhood or welcome pedestrian experience, but I think any efforts to redirect rather than reduce vehicle throughput should be treated with great skepticism.
Xanny t1_iu7jrn0 wrote
I drove through downtown today (yes, boo me, the bus would have taken 3x as long :( with a 20 min transfer) and Pratt seemed pretty crowded.
Getting me off the road there would have required a transit connection from Union Square to Franklin Square that took a similar amount of time to driving on 40. I get that the citys transit probably can't beat i95 just because its so conveniently located (at cost - i95 cut the south and east off entirely, and that highway was monstrously expensive).
I don't really see that happening any time soon, they would need express busses on route 40 or something similar (I know Portland OR actually took away whole downtown streets to transit only and that really helped) but its already only a 2 lane for most of its length and people already ignore bus only lanes in the city because there is no traffic enforcement so I don't know how well that would help.
I think we really need a ring metro from the Boston St Red Line station to Federal Hill that hits Patterson, John Hopkins Hospital & University, Hampden, Druid Hill Park, the West Baltimore MARC Station, something in SOWEBO, like near Union Square, a station at the stadiums, and that end in Fed Hill. So much of what I'm doing is going between those parts of town anyway.
Of course, that is all tunneling and underground station construction, so it would require the state to give a shit about the city its been underfunding for a century, so good luck with that.
ohamza t1_iu04377 wrote
This might be naive, but 83 should be ripped out all the way up to Norther Parkway. Or at the very least converted to have bus lanes, at most one or two lanes, and remove the connections by Druid Hill Park. I'd also love it if it went under North instead of over, then the whole thing can be covered for anyone who wants to drive downtown.
If the light rail had more reach I'd even say turn one of the further stops up into a park and ride so cars don't need to go downtown.
Xanny t1_iu0izdi wrote
The only problem I have with cutting 83 further north, which would normally be a great idea and long term I'd def agree to cut it out to Northern Parkway, is that the light rail doesn't go direct to Penn Station from the north. Like if we want to cut the highways we need to actually offer an alternative that won't piss people off feeling like a huge downgrade.
That being said yea, they totally should put in an infill park and ride at Northern Parkway for the light rail. If you are coming down 83 from PA there are park and ride signs for the light rail in Timonium, but from the Beltway you really don't have a good spot to do it at.
Long term the goal for transit development in Baltimore should be to build out light and heavy rail to the major burbs at the city border (if the red line is built to Catonsville, then Parkville is the only really big one I see needing a dedicated right of way rail connection) and build up the city core with proper metro so commuters feel fine park and riding in from near the beltway. But that has to start and build out center-out, meaning we need things like the red line making inner city connections that are woefully needed, and replacing MLK and 83 with complete streets and working transit.
ohamza t1_iu0w5bl wrote
You're absolutely right, and I think moving the JFX back would be a piecemeal process. For example by getting rid of some of these really ugly interchanges like at Druid Hill Park.
I do think though if budget is an issue taking away a lane on some of these two lane one ways for a bus is the quickest way to get people to start taking them, then they could be upgraded to light rail. The problem with buses now is the frequency and the number of stops. if they were some expresses that would take you across town it would make it much more reasonable to use. Even the light rail I feel suffers from this issue.
todareistobmore t1_iu10d1s wrote
Number of stops is a much smaller problem than :gestures broadly:. Buses in most cities stop every couple of blocks (most of the locals in Manhattan are standardized at every other block, IIRC).
Reckon we need more buses and traffic prioritization first and foremost, but also ffs more streamlined fare payment pls. Make the cash fare $2 and spread out any future increases to stick to (at least) quarters, and I suppose ideally look toward contactless payment for the future.
ohamza t1_iu15u38 wrote
Yes, and actually when I am in Manhattan I don't use the bus for similar reasons unless it's the unique case of trying to get across town if I'm not in the LES. Traffic prioritization is certainly a key, as is the frequency of buses here. I don't recall the headways for NYC MTA buses but I'm certain it's faster than the 15 minutes+ it can be around here.
Xanny t1_iu1bje7 wrote
The charm pass works fine, just flash the driver the little screen animation thing, my problem with it is the fare structure sucks in that if you take a bus somewhere and back you are just stuck doing a full day pass no matter what. The $2 passes should be for like 4 hours of transit so that most trips are included in that pass rather than the like 15 or 30 minutes it currently is.
todareistobmore t1_iu1g822 wrote
I'm not sure any transit system works like that--usually transfers are for a limited time window and can't be used on the same route specifically to avoid people using them for round trips. IMO as far as overall fare things to adopt, I wish more American cities would do like London where if you pay per ride up to the level of a particular day/week pass, it just converts you to that.
But as for paying fare itself, I more mean that our MTA welcomes too much delay at the farebox. A $1.90 fare absolutely encourages people to turn out their pockets to make exact change, and refilling CharmCards on the bus was slow and error-prone (but also necessary bc we don't have much other transit). It's just such a stupid self-own not to prioritize getting passengers to board/deboard as quickly as possible.
Xanny t1_iu1o7xt wrote
Eliminating fares is definitely a huge benefit to specifically bus systems because it makes stops way more efficient. But I get the antagonistic relationship between MDoT and Bmore means that the state will never just give the city free busses.
One idea I've been floating is that the city should give residents 3, 5, or 7 free day charm passes a month. I'd want them to just load them on the app but way too many people don't have phones or cell service (something else the city could do, municipal cell service and a phone recycling program to give people that need phones phones) but in the meantime they could just load them on the app for residents that have phones and anyone else can get the pass in the mail. Maybe give out 7 days paper and 8 on the app to try to promote its use a bit, but still give everyone at least a week of free transit.
DC is floating the same kind of policy with $100 a month allowance per city resident in Metro, and this would be a lot less per person, but I think it would still get more people using transit and might get more pressure to improve it if people in Fells and Fed Hill were on it more often.
Xanny t1_iu1auj2 wrote
The problem with 83 for busses isn't needing a dedicated lane, its the backups getting off the highway. Giving them a bus only lane on the highway doesn't do anything to fix that.
I am annoyed on the bus subject how much MD is trying to push electric busses when what we really need is that the colored line busses (and well, all the busses in general) having better than fucking 40 minute headways. I live on the purple line, they just cut the route from John Hopkins which really messed with me because it used to stop throughout downtown and at Shot Tower and now it skips half the city,
We need some express busses for arterials, particularly on rts 40 and 1. And we need way, way more frequent service on every line - 4-8 minute headways for colored lines, and 15 minute headways for numbered lines. People don't take the bus that could to get cars off the road because you can't get anywhere with a direct connection (and if you can, the bus stops 30 times and takes twice as long as driving anyway) and if you have to transfer you are stuck waiting somewhere for upwards of 20-30 minutes, and then half the time your transfer bus never even shows up.
I wish I could take the bus to doctors appointments, its like the perfect use case for busses, but I can't because I have to assume the bus will never show, get stuck in traffic, or that I'll miss the transfer. And even if it goes perfectly, most places I go regularly take 15-20 minutes by car and 40-120 minutes by bus. Make driving suck, and make taking transit not, and more people will take transit over driving, and then the city can build denser and waste less space on parking and roads for cars that drive people away.
Like, I am the person that hates driving and wants to use transit, but if I'm choosing between hopping in the car I park outside my townhouse with plenty of permit free street parking, have almost no traffic cuz the roads are so massive all the way out to some suburb sprawl mall with football fields worth of free parking in half the time it would take to bus anywhere, or possibly getting marooned somewhere with groceries when a bus just never shows or is 30 minutes out from when I'm done shopping, the system pushes you so hugely towards driving the planet killer.
Top it all off with most downtown jobs providing parking garages, so its not like you have to worry about parking for work, so of course you are going to drive there.
ohamza t1_iu1hmqb wrote
Right on my friend, I do agree with a lot of your points - specifically headways and managing transfers. But that's why I think by reducing lanes, changing bus routes so that they don't get backed up by car traffic, and the real key you mentioned of reducing headways it would make it much more feasible. There are plenty of times I give up and take my car because I don't have to spend 2x-3x as much time taking the bus when I could do it in my car.
As for the parking garages, this is one of the few times I'd advocate jacking up prices - granted as long as it's easy to get into the city, to dissuade people from coming in. Hell the city could charge a flat tax on people parking which goes back into reinvestment.
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