Red Line Now

03/22/2016

Seattle's light rail tunnel project went really smooth, came in under budget, and finished early.

https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/seattle-virginia-beach-light-rail-london-crossrail

Plus a British commission urges a fast track for London's Crossrail 2, and more in our weekly New Starts.

01/29/2016

Seattle's new light rail tunnel that is $150 million under budget

There will now be service from downtown to a Capitol Hill Station at Broadway and E John St., as well as the University of Washington station near Husky Stadium.

12/29/2015

"Mickey Martin, a middle-aged African American man waiting for a bus as cars streamed by near the Lexington Market...said he spends around 14 hours a week on the city’s buses, making at least two transfers to make it out to Edmundson [sic] Ave, one of the areas the new light rail line would have reached."

Governor Larry Hogan’s decision to eliminate a long-planned light rail line serving African American neighborhoods and switch funds to roads in the suburbs has prompted a civil rights suit

12/23/2015

"Reasonable people can differ on the design of the Red Line, but it's hard to ignore the facts — that existing public transportation infrastructure in Baltimore is woefully insufficient, that the city needs jobs and economic opportunity desperately and that the communities involved have suffered from a legacy of racial discrimination."

Few things put otherwise reasonable people in a fighting mood like an accusation of racism. So it's safe to assume Gov. Larry Hogan and his advisers were none too happy to hear that the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and the ACLU of Maryland have filed a complaint this week with the U.S. Dep…

12/22/2015

""The same urban-rural politics that prioritize roads over railways play out in Detroit and Los Angeles. The same suburban fears about subway-riding robbers crop up beyond Baltimore. Because these fault lines are so common, transportation is a civil rights issue nearly anywhere."

How transportation racially divides us, according to a new federal complaint in Baltimore.

12/21/2015

"Representatives of the coalition...pointed to decades of transportation decisions they say have disadvantaged African-Americans, including the failure to build out a more extensive subway line and the construction of a north-south light rail line that does not serve many of the communities where black residents live."

A coalition of civil rights groups and city residents filed a federal complaint against the Hogan administration Monday, claiming its cancellation of Baltimore's Red Line light rail project was racially discriminatory.

12/21/2015

“This is a critical civil rights issue. Everyone who knows this city knows that the lack of rapid transit restricts access to jobs and housing for low and middle income African-American residents living along the city’s east-west corridor,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, President & Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF).

11/19/2015

The agency, which oversees the design of millions of miles of roads in the United States, proposed a new rule which would dramatically ease federal design standards for many of those roadways. It’s a move that would make a Complete Streets approach significantly easier for communities across the cou…

11/09/2015

Coverage from the Frederick News Post of last week's letter sent to Secretary Rahn by Maryland transit advocates.

Stop building new roads until the old ones are made safe. This road system is not working and Marylanders are paying with their lives.

http://www.fredericknewspost.com/opinion/columns/groups-push-for-traffic-safety-over-capacity/article_cfb9e71c-c9ed-5ab7-8d29-8020063e359e.html

Six regional transportation groups have called on state transportation Secretary Pete Rahn to emphasize road safety over capacity.

11/06/2015

Our road system as presently designed is unsafe and overbuilt. In its present state, why would we expand it putting even more lives at risk and threatening Maryland's fiscal health?

That just doesn't make sense.

11/03/2015

Swing by and check this out tonight... should be a good time:

"HOW WILL WE GET AROUND TOMORROW?"

Tuesday Nov 3, 6:30pm
The Windup Space
12 W. North Ave, Baltimore, Maryland 21201

A casual conversation about what happens to transportation in this region with the Red Line gone, a new water transit plan, a new bike master plan, Maglev and monorail proposals, the Circulator, automated cars and the all new CityLink bus plan.

Presenters: Liz Cornish and Greg Hinchliffe (Bikemore), Grant Corley (Red Line Now), Dru Schmidt Perkins (1000 Friends of Maryland), Robin Budish (Transit Choices). Moderated by Klaus Philipsen

10/26/2015

If you think there's any way that adding new road capacity can be construed as fiscally-responsible-- we've got a bridge we'd like to sell you.

New report measures the "farebox recovery" of the road system: less than 50% before figuring in free parking subsidies, the cost of parking minimums, hidden cost of deferred maintenance, and the depreciation of the existing assets which eventually will require replacement at a cost of $100 million per mile.

Exposing the true costs of driving