Briefly in the late 1990s, the region's hottest transit proposal was to build a light rail loop surrounding downtown. It even garnered a front page top-of-the-fold full-speed-ahead headline in The Sun. This happened amid growing concerns that the system's downtown segment on Howard Street which opened in 1992 was too far west to serve all downtown adequately. Fast forwarding to the present, downtown has indeed pushed eastward toward Harbor East and away from Howard Street, which light rail has failed to revive. So it's time to revisit this concept. Despite inherent problems, it could still wor ..read more

Thanks to the botched Draft Environmental Impact Study report which was recently released, it's back to the drawing board to find a workable Baltimore Magnetic Levitation train station. The international MagLev team can be excused for its failure, even if it was intended, but our own Maryland Department of Transportation's name is right there on the cover page along with the US DOT, so they need to go back and get busy re-examining options. Based on the station standards in the EIS, here are three that are far more reasonable than their own options, Cherry Hill or Camden Yards. Pata ..read more

The Draft Environmental Impact Statement has just been released for the 300 mph, $10-billion-plus Magnetic Levitation train system from Washington to Baltimore, and wow, have they made a shambles of the plans for the Baltimore Station! The only rational thing that can be done now is to end the project's Phase One at BWI Marshall Airport and save Baltimore for the future, when clearer heads may prevail. Proposed Downtown Maglev station (in yellow) would wipe out two large modern Pratt Street buildings, much of the Convention Center, the historic Otterbein Church and the Federal Reserve Ba ..read more

From its opening in 1980, Harborplace was an international success story. So what went wrong? Harborplace's big strength was also its big weakness. It was built by a suburban developer, James Rouse, as a little piece of suburbia in the center of the city where suburbanites and visitors would feel safe experiencing the city. But since then, neighborhoods in the real city have emerged to fulfill this role in a far more authentic way. Now it's time for Harborplace to emulate the neighborhoods. Pratt Street Pavilion of Harborplace - Its pedestrian bridge over Pratt Street should be extended ..read more

The same old answers aren't going to work for candidates in the city's upcoming election. So here is a guide to show them how to get beyond the current rhetoric about urban symptoms like crime and corruption to make a real physical difference in the future of Baltimore. Voters can then compare this to what the candidates are promising and decide who to support. Here are five ways Baltimore can turn the corner and embrace the future: A possible new Circulator Bus non-profit authority district 1 - Replace and expand Charm City Circulator Bus System The Charm City Circulator bus system i ..read more

The latest word for the 300 mph MagLev plan under Baltimore is for the downtown station to replace the Garmatz Federal Courthouse, just north across Pratt Street from the previous site at the Convention Center. That's progress, but it needs to be nudged north just one more block to the site of the Fallon Federal Building at the south end of Charles Center, whose demolition would be far more beneficial for the entire city. Fallon Building, as seen across Lombard Street from Garmatz Building, built on top of an imposing impenetrable pedestal, cutting it off from the rest of the city and al ..read more

While the planners at the Baltimore Metropolitan Council have declared failure in the effort to build any new rail transit in their 25 year plan, there's still a project that can keep the door open. The West Baltimore MARC Station must be totally replaced when the planned new Amtrak tunnel is built. For this new station, $90M has been programmed in the region's long range plan. This creates a great opportunity to use the Amtrak Northeast U.S. Corridor as the impetus for new transit in Baltimore, even while we've given up on expanding our own region's rail transit system. Building a great train ..read more

The good news in the new draft 2045 regional transportation plan produced by the Baltimore Metropolitan Council is that the city is focusing on coordinating its major transportation projects into development areas, namely Port Covington and the "Highway to Nowhere" corridor. The bad news is that the plan is virtually all highway projects, with no new rail transit whatsoever. The always obsolete "Highway to Nowhere" will be retained, albeit in slightly truncated form. Is this the death knell for "transit oriented development"? This is how the Red Line had been proposed to look at the Har ..read more

Baltimoreans know the drill: Whenever some big new hyped-up "game changer" development proposal comes along, like Port Covington, Horseshoe Casino, M&T Bank Stadium and even the dead Walmart, everything in the past gets swept away - both good plans and bad. So the latest of countless Middle Branch plans now being prepared is like a shot in the dark. Let's enjoy the pretty surrealistic renderings by "world class" architectural firms and then focus on the many (mostly) ignored possible developments that could really make this area take off. Here are six of them. West8 came up with the ..read more

It's a tale of two Woodberries. In historic Woodberry, irreplaceable houses from the 1840s are being demolished. Meanwhile, new high density housing is being built in another Woodberry that nobody knew existed, where the "highest and best use" until now was the city's Stump Dump. Historic Woodberry is a highly livable transit-oriented community, while the New Woodberry is devoid of urban charm - but that's where major new development should be and is happening. "The Woodberry" - a large standard-issue boxy efficient postmodern apartment building of the type which is now popular and ..read more