The "Plank Line" from Westport to Port Covington

Make room for opportunistic rail transit

The MTA Red Line died because its waterfront tunnel was way too expensive, yet that's just the part proponents pointed to for major new development. But it's far easier to build a different line using existing rail right of way and vacant land with far more new development opportunities.

After the 15 year Red Line ordeal, perhaps Baltimore's next rail transit line should be short, quick, relatively inexpensive and truly in sync with future development. But only if the timing is right.

The recent announcement that Baltimore's billionaire Kevin Plank has bought the Westport waterfront underscores a major lesson: Development is all about timing. Great developers have it, while the rest of us - planners, bureaucrats, spin-meisters and other mere mortals - don't.

Less successful developers certainly don't have it. Patrick Turner assembled the Westport properties a decade ago at great cost and fanfare which ended with his recent foreclosure, whereby Under Armour magnate Plank picked them up at the fire-sale price of just $6 million, after also buying development rights to Port Covington across the water from various landholders.

Western Maryland railroad right-of-way in Port Covington looking toward

 Westport in 2007. It still looks about the same except Patrick Turner

had the Westport building in the background demolished.

Big businesses don't necessarily have it. Wal-Mart and The Sun bought into Port Covington early-on, even though their ugly sprawled-out buildings were totally out of keeping with the urban hype and vision.

Most of the city's vacant buildings and lots are monuments to bad timing, fueled by bad planning. Worst of all are bad mega-deals where some kind of arbitrary long-range development and payback timing is preordained, then kicked down the road whence the lawyers end up sorting it out. More and more deals are ending up that way.

The MTA and the City don't have it. They built the central light rail line and formulated the Middle Branch vision for Westport and Port Covington back in the 1980s and 1990s and have been waiting for riders and development ever since.

The recently failed $3-billion-plus MTA Red Line transit plan was predicated upon filling its billion-plus dollar funding gap with a convoluted 30-40 year "public-private partnership" that promised to be a disaster in the making.

Learning Our Lessons

At least when the Central Light Rail line was built in the early '90s, the inevitable cost overruns were resolved by cheapening up the plan rather than mortgaging or foregoing our future. That caused some further temporary pain as the second track was built later, and much of it is still in disarray, but it's fixable. Even simple matters like better traffic signal timing and decent pedestrian connections would help immensely.

The worst part is the region's chronic failure with "transit oriented development", which has left Westport, Howard Street and State Center to crumble in the clutches of speculators.

The Red Line would have attempted to resolve this problem in the worst possible way. Half its huge cost was to be devoted to a 3.4 mile tunnel to allow it to serve areas which are already being developed anyway in concert with automobile dependency. That's the worst of both worlds, as evidenced by John Paterakis forcing the Harbor East station to be tucked away rather than being oriented to serve the prime Central Avenue growth corridor from Harbor Point to Old Town.

The way out of this institutionalized mess is to develop plans which are not dependent upon timing. The city should instead focus on how to build the basic infrastructure necessary to allow the best projects to rise to the top, without convoluted long-term subsidies that undercut competition and transparency.

Fortunately, the best designed transit line the city can ever hope to have is already in place - the 16-mile Metro. And the best designed portion of the Central Light Rail Line is the two-miles between downtown, Camden Yards and Westport. The rest of its south leg to Cherry Hill and BWI-Marshall Airport is pretty good too. All of this is something to build upon.

The Plank Line

The immensity of Kevin Plank's new Under Armour Empire between Westport and Port Covington has big pitfalls, but also creates big opportunities. One of the biggest is the possibility of building an inexpensive 1.5 mile light rail spur between them which would enable "transit oriented development" on a scale that the Red Line could only dream of.

Coupled with the best two- miles of the existing light rail line, this would create a strong, seamless connection to Camden Yards, the Convention Center, the Pratt Street Inner Harbor corridor, and the portion of downtown which most desperately needs to be revitalized. It would also create an easy path for local tycoons to get to the airport to visit the rest of the Under Armour World Empire, while mingling with their customers from Cherry Hill to Linthicum.

Unused West Maryland Railroad bridge over Middle Branch, as shown in 2007 City Planning Commission report.

The signature element of the Plank Line would be the old Western Maryland Trestle Bridge which is already on the drawing boards for revitalization as part of the Middle Branch bike/hike path system. This portion of the Plank Line would probably need only one track, leaving plenty of room to accommodate the adjacent joggers and bikers actively modeling their Under Armour-ware.

The former Western Maryland rail right-of-way continues under Hanover Street and into Port Covington, which used to be its great port terminal freight yard. At the Sun plant, the Plank Line can turn southward down to the Wal-Mart and its adjacent abandoned Sam's Club, which Under Armour is now adapting for waterfront office space. Charles Street can also be extended southward through the McComas/CSX spaghetti to provide an umbilical cord between the Plank Line, Port Covington and the existing South Baltimore neighborhoods. Even congested Hanover Street can be upgraded as its spiffy new median strip at the south end of the existing neighborhood demonstrates.

All of this should be planned now, but should not be built until and unless development is ready for it.

Defunct Wal-Mart Sam's Club is now being rebuilt and reoriented to the water for Under Armour (Kevin's Club?)

The Near Term

A new North Westport station along the existing central light rail line could be built sooner if opportunities warrant. While ultimately it would anchor the Westport end of the Under Armour empire and enable transfers to catch the light rail to the airport, it could also be the closest "terra firma" for a light rail station to serve the Horseshoe Casino via an extension of the Middle Branch Greenway. This could provide the great urban waterfront front-door image that the casino needs to displace its gasoline-alley persona across from all the gas station/convenience stores on Russell Street.

Strong measures are also needed right now to start arresting the eastward drift of the downtown, which has been integral to the failure of Westport, Howard Street, and the entire light rail ridershed. The central light rail line needs to be worth connecting to.

The clearest way to do this is to integrate the light rail and Metro stations at Lexington Market into a strong central transit hub, something all successful modern rail transit systems have. This could include a direct pedestrian connection through the Hutzler's Clay Street portico, a bus hub on the MTA parking lot north of Saratoga, and a link to a west-only Red Line.

The recent extension of the Under Armour Empire westward to Westport could thus help guide the direction of the entire city. A 1.5 mile "Plank Line" could be instrumental in reinforcing this, but only if and when the timing is right.