Here’s a look at the proposed plan to revamp Baltimore’s Charm City Circulator

It’s no secret that Baltimore’s Charm City Circulator bus system has been in need of a revamp for quite some time. The Baltimore City Department of Transportation (BCDOT)’s free, mostly downtown-based, alternative to the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA)’s primary bus system launched in 2010 with great fanfare. Initially, riders flocked to the bus for its cheaper cost and trailblazing real-time tracking app.

But a series of convoluted route expansions, malfunctioning buses, and funding cuts made the Circulator less and less reliable over the following decade. Ridership plummeted to the point where revamping it became a major platform item for then mayoral candidate, Brandon Scott, leading up to his 2020 election. It was also a major issue in Scott’s 2021 transition report, a guiding document highlighting issues the mayor will focus on during his term in office.

BCDOT recently released its Transit Development Plan (TDP), a five-year roadmap to revitalizing the CCC. The TDP’s main goal is to address equity and efficiency issues connected to routes while strengthening “connections between communities, jobs, and services,” according to the plan. And there are several route changes proposed to address these issues. Here’s what we know so far, and how it could impact residents.

Banner/Cherry Route (Parts of Banner and Purple Routes would be added to this line )

Current Route: North-south, from the Inner Harbor to Fort McHenry.

Revised route: North-south, from the Inner Harbor/Pratt Street to Cherry Hill via Port Covington.

Trade-offs and notes: The Banner Route stops at the Inner Harbor and the adjacent neighborhood of Federal Hill would be combined with Port Covington, a high-profile mixed-use redevelopment site connected to Under Armor mogul Kevin Plank, and the lower-income, relatively transit-starved South Baltimore neighborhood of Cherry Hill. BCDOT hopes this will inject more racial equity into a system often criticized by politicians, planners, and activists for focusing on whiter, wealthier neighborhoods with higher rates of car ownership.

The tradeoff would be that the parts of the Banner Route along Key Highway and Fort Avenue, covering the more gentrified neighborhood of Locust Point, would be eliminated from the Circulator system entirely. The MTA’s existing #71 and #94 buses would take sole responsibility for bus coverage along the corridor, which includes Locust Point and Port Covington. That decision alone has already drawn the ire of both residents and elected officials, including Eric Costello, the City Councilman for District 11.

Green Route

Current route: East-west, from Johns Hopkins Hospital (JHH) to City Hall via Fells Point and Harbor Point (Home to the HQ of Constellation Energy and future home of the HQ for T. Rowe Price).

Revised Route: Northeast-west, from North Avenue to City Hall via Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Trade-offs and notes: The Green Route would lose its stops in and around the popular waterfront neighborhood of Fells Point, the upscale shopping destination of Harbor East, and the mixed-use development site of Harbor Point to the Orange Route. Its path from Downtown to JHH via Fayette Street would be nixed in favor of a connection via Orleans Street, which isn’t currently served by any MTA routes. Its eastern terminus would also move much further north up Broadway from JHH to North Avenue.

Orange Route

Current Route: East-west, from Harbor East to Hollins Market, one of six public markets still running in Baltimore.

Revised Route: East-west, from Harbor Point to Hollins Market via Harbor East.

Trade-offs and notes: Surprisingly few for now, though adding on an extension to Harbor Point, with its proximity to Fells Point, would accelerate a trend begun around 2017. Harbor Point forced the closure of several Green Route stops there and in Fells Point, some of which never re-opened, and left the Orange Route as the closest Circulator line for much of the area.

The Orange Route would add new stops on its western end near the newly renovated Lexington Market and Poe Homes, one of the city’s largest public housing developments, as well as a new stop further east near Perkins Homes, currently in the process of being transformed from public housing into more of a mixed-use, mixed-income development.

Purple Route

Current Route: North-south, from 33rd Street to Federal Hill.

Revised Route: Northeast-south, from Waverly to the Maryland Science Center and the Inner Harbor, via Greenmount Avenue, 33rd St. and Charles St.

Trade-offs and notes: The Purple Route would lose some of its Federal Hill stops to the Cherry Route. But by extending further eastward at its northern end past Johns Hopkins University’s main campus (instead of stopping almost directly south of it) to Waverly, it would likely gain at least somewhat more racially and economically diverse ridership.

More to come?

The TDP also calls for a couple longer-term changes. Specifically, BCDOT Transit Bureau Chief Monica White, who helped spearhead the plan’s development, wants to extend the Orange Route even further east from Harbor Point to the suburban-style shopping development of Canton Crossing, as well as further west to Pigtown, another neighborhood adjoining Downtown. She also wants to add a new “Poe Route” running west from Downtown along Lexington Street to the West Baltimore MARC station.

None of these proposed changes would take effect until the spring or summer of 2024, given the need for public comment and notification, as well as the time needed to build new bus stops and upgrade older ones.

White also noted that BCDOT isn’t currently receiving any additional money to expand the Circulator. This had a significant effect on the scope of the TDP, with more of the focus going towards “optimizing” existing routes instead of creating several new ones.

Even so, the Orange Route extensions and Poe Route were included in the plan as a sort of proof of concept for future grants BCDOT might receive. “Having this completed Transit Development Plan, what it allows for myself and my team is that we can go out and say ‘we have a plan to be able to improve on our service, now we need the funding’,” White said. “And that’s one of the key pieces that the FTA looks for us to be able to be awarded that are for and around transit.”

A mixed reception

The current reception to the plan by residents and local transportation advocates has been mixed. For example, Central Maryland Transportation Alliance President/CEO Brian O’Malley praised the TDP for extending the Purple Route over towards 33rd St. and Greenmount Ave. and for incorporating the all-too-often neglected Cherry Hill area into the Circulator via the Cherry Route.

At the same time, he worried about the excessive amount of turns the Cherry Route’s design calls for. “The DC Circulator, in my opinion, is not as good as the Purple or Orange Circulators in Baltimore for that same reason, it makes too many turns”, said O’Malley. “I think the ones that are straight, they’re simple to understand and they’re more efficient, especially when there’s traffic on the street.”

The main problem O’Malley and other transportation advocates seem to have with the TDP for the Charm City Circulator is that it doesn’t do enough to improve transportation equity, or at least not as much as it could have. O’Malley attributes this to the Circulator’s longstanding problems with defining its core mission: “I think they could’ve taken a bigger, more comprehensive approach to this, instead they said ‘let’s tinker around the edges.’”

The public comment period for the proposed routes runs until today. However, a draft and final report are still pending on the plan.