Would Baltimore be better off with a regional transit authority?

Out of the 35 largest metropolitan transit agencies in the United States, Baltimore’s expansive system of buses, trains, and light rail is the only one in the control of a state agency with no appointed board oversight. Just nine percent of all jobs in the region can be reached within an hour via public transit. Light rail service in Charm City was “indefinitely suspended” in December just to be restored a couple of weeks later.

The woes riders face go so far beyond a general sense of public transportation stagnation that local advocates gave the MTA a D+ grade on its performance in 2023. That’s why, despite several legal and legislative setbacks, the desire for greater self-determination remains alluring. But would Charm City be better off with a regional authority?

No authority for an authority

The idea of a regional transit authority grew out of the grassroots activism of the Baltimore Transit Equity Coalition (BTEC) which gathered more than 14,000 signatures to put a petition on the ballot in 2022 in favor of a dedicated city fund to back the effort. Born in response to the cancellation of Baltimore’s Red Line in 2015, the coalition centers community voices to “supplant structural racism in public transit policy with structural change.”

Local election officials, however, deemed 4,400 of those signatures “invalid,” sending the proposal off the rails. Although BTEC restarted collecting signatures last year, the creation of such a fund would be largely a symbol of city residents’ support as more steps would be needed to transition it into something resembling a regional transit authority. Baltimore’s public transportation, like all other transit systems in Maryland, is centrally funded at the state level.

“There are definitely warnings out there that the grass is always greener on the other side, but we still think we would be better off with a regional transit authority than we are with the MTA just being a unit under the state government,” said Brian O’Malley of the Central Maryland Transit Alliance. “There is a structural mismatch where the MTA and the people who depend on it are within a fairly urban region, but MDOT only answers to the governor who worries about voters statewide who don’t want to see transit investment in Baltimore and its immediate suburbs.”

During last year’s legislative session, Del. Tony Bridges, D-Baltimore, introduced a flurry of bills to wrest more control over transit planning and funding from the state level to the region he represented (he now serves as an assistant secretary for the Maryland Department of Transportation). However, the only bill to pass out of the General Assembly and receive the signature of Gov. Wes Moore was HB794, which established a Baltimore Regional Transit Commission (BRTC).

Officially created in October under the purview of the Baltimore Metropolitan Council, the BRTC began meeting earlier this month with a threefold mission: examine the region’s long range transit plan, provide recommendations on transit’s financing and budget, and evaluate the performance of the MTA. The board’s membership is designed to mix gubernatorial and local government appointments from the MTA’s service area to represent the region.

“A core purpose of putting this group together was to create a board that would publicly champion transit in our region,” said Mike Kelly, executive director of the Baltimore Metropolitan Council. “There [was] not an organized group of people whose job it is to support transit [in Baltimore], and it’s a key part of getting projects done and developing a system to have key voices out there.”

Despite being Maryland’s largest locally operated transit system, the MTA hasn’t delivered a single new rail project since the 1990s. The system also hasn’t expanded using more affordable modes like bus rapid transit either. However, that doesn’t mean the BRTC is being set up to hammer Baltimore’s flagging transit system, according to Kelly.

“This is not a gotcha committee,” he said. “It is also there to support and celebrate the things that are working. Our bus system is one of the largest in the country, and not enough people understand its importance to civic and economic life here in Baltimore.”

Red Line reaction

With the recent release of six possible corridors for the region’s proposed Red Line — a cross-city connection from western Baltimore County to Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in the city’s southeast, the need for the region to speak on public transportation policy with one voice has never been greater. Republican Gov. Larry Hogan never would have been able to reject roughly $900 million in federal funds to build the Red Line if a Baltimore Regional Transit Authority had already existed, according to Del. Robbyn Lewis, D-Baltimore.

“[Regional transit authorities] can function as a kind of protective layer between capricious political games and substantive policy actions,” she said. “What former Gov. Hogan was able to do in canceling the Red Line project by fiat with a sweep of his pen would have been impossible if there had been another layer of administrative function to intercede, and we simply didn’t have that in Maryland.”

Although the vast majority of the Baltimore region’s residents are still enraged about Hogan’s derailing of what would have been the city’s second SubwayLink line, that doesn’t mean there’s any consensus to separate the MTA from MDOT. Public transportation in Maryland didn’t face the same fiscal cliffs that threatened other systems across the country during COVID because every mode from highways to airports to transit is tied to state coffers.

“There is a lot of inherent value in having our transit system attached to MDOT,” said Kelly. In both our commission discussions in the fall and legislative hearings in the spring, there wasn’t a push or a consensus to entirely break the system off. There were too many unknowns and impacts to current service and riders. It would require a complete upending of the way that Maryland funds transportation, not just here in this region but statewide.”

Finding the funding

Currently, Baltimore and its surrounding counties don’t pay a single cent towards public transit and haven’t announced any plans to change that, even with all the excitement surrounding the revival of the Red Line project under Gov. Moore. If the region did have to chip in or fully fund the MTA in exchange for more authority, that’s a deal that O’Malley of the Central Maryland Transit Alliance believes voters would be willing to make. He points to the fact that 29 of 36 ballot initiatives to expand transit funding across America passed last year and that regional referenda fared even better than statewide votes.

Whether Greater Baltimore’s feedback structure to the MTA remains an advisory commission or advances to a regional authority, Lewis believes local and state leaders have a responsibility to activate their constituents to demand more for this long neglected part of Maryland.

“Baltimore is two generations behind where we should be in terms of mass transit infrastructure,” she said. “The average person here has an atrophied imagination of what is possible because they have been deprived of the opportunity to dream bigger. We need fixed rail, greenways, bus rapid transit, protected bike infrastructure, complete streets, and pedestrian prioritization. We need it all.”