Already the new New Starts rules are starting to change thinking about transit investments. Now if we only had the money to construct these lines.
The committee wants MTA officials to take a look at “heavy rail” alignments for those proposals. Heavy rail is the mode used in the Baltimore Metro Subway, and MTA officials have insisted that it would be too expensive to win crucial federal approval.
But new Federal Transit Administration guidelines from the Obama administration have raised hopes among transit advocates that heavy rail might make more sense, because the consideration has been expanded to include more than just cost effectiveness.
3 comments:
You are correct that the restudy suggestions are not practical. The Maryland MTA thinks that the new FTA standards, while they would improve the Baltimore Red Line's chances, wouldn't provide funding for heavy rail.
It would be very unwise to restudy the Red Line after so much work and political will has gone into it. Baltimore needs more fixed rail ASAP.
Would it be possible to keep the Red Line as LRT but potentially re-study parts of the route to make it all grade seperated and therefore heavy rail-like?Something like LA's Green Line.
I recall there was only a few rather short portions of surface trackage planned, maybe now these can be subsurface.
"It would be very unwise to restudy the Red Line after so much work and political will has gone into it. Baltimore needs more fixed rail ASAP."
^This is the sunk cost fallacy.
The MTA is hand waving. There is no reason to think with the revised criteria heavy rail isn't better than light rail for Baltimore.
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