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 DEIS, here are three that are far more reasonable than their own options, Cherry Hill or Camden Yards.
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| Patapsco Hill MagLev Station site - showing a range of possible angles to conform to any underground MagLev alignment. The central light rail line which would provide regional connections is on the left (west) edge of the yellow box. |
It's all about the angles
This failure can't be blamed on the specialized requirements of cutting edge MagLev technology. Yes, a very smooth gentle alignment is necessary to accommodate 300 mph speeds, but that's just a matter of geometry, not technology. Creating such a smooth high speed alignment simply boils down to the angle to which each station is oriented. And the 1300 foot long trains also require stations to be of that same length, or more depending on the construction requirements for digging the tunnel at a given site.
Here is how the Draft EIS report describes this challenge and the resultant need to demolish ALL buildings around their proposed station at Camden Yards:
(Chapter 4, Affected Environment, page 9/13)
"The Camden Yards station is more challenging because the project orientation and alignment cannot match the existing Baltimore street grid. To access the station area, all buildings above the proposed station for a distance of 1,970 linear feet will have to be demolished to create open space for the top-down construction activity. It is not feasible to build a station in this location with the tunnel boring method because of the width required for a station, the presence of underground utilities and the presence of adjacent building and roadway support structures."
So here are three other station locations that can work in this context. Two are situated so that they can be oriented to a wide range of angles, depending on what becomes the optimum alignment for high speed non-stop through trains between Washington, DC and New York City. The third option is a relatively minor tweak of the Camden Yards station proposed in the Draft EIS plan, in order to minimize its damage to downtown, which would otherwise be severe and unacceptable, including demolition of the Bank of America tower, Garmatz Federal Building, historic Otterbein Church and much of the Convention Center and Federal Reserve Bank complex.
1 - Patapsco Hill Station
The graphic above shows a wide range of possible angles and locations for this station option just south of Patapsco Avenue. All of these options can be feasibly excavated and connected to the central light rail line (shown in blue on the left/west edge of the yellow box) without demolition of any significant buildings or permanently losing any Southwest Park facilities. The background for this plan was provided in
this previous blog post.
The two potential station boxes shown are both in excess of 4300 feet long, well over twice that of the proposed Camden Yards Station and far longer than the required 1300 foot MagLev train platforms. So the actual project footprint would be much smaller than the two that are shown, anywhere in the range between them which ensures full flexibility.
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| Shot Tower / Old Town Station site - Under Fayette Street at the bottom (south - brown box) has the least tilt toward the northeast, while extending it through the Post Office site (purple box) and/or under Gay Street (yellow box) would increase the angle. |
2 - Shot Tower / Old Town Station
Three alternative station boxes for this site are shown in the graphic above. All would originate in the vicinity of the Jones Falls Expressway (I-83) corridor adjacent to downtown, where they would be served by the Shot Tower Metro Station and a possible extension of the light rail line from Penn Station that was part of the proposed regional rail system from the mid 1970s to late 1990s. More background is contained in
this blog post.
Ironically, this light rail extension plan was abandoned just as the building boom started in nearby Harbor East, while the light rail line which was built in the 1990s along Howard Street on the west side of downtown was met by a major building bust in that corridor.
The police headquarters at the southwest (lower) end of the brown and purple boxes is slated to be vacated by the Police Department, because of the poor condition of the buildings caused by deferred maintenance. The Central Post Office would most likely also be demolished as part of this plan, if for no other reason but that it would be a valuable site for MagLev construction staging and future transit oriented development, but it could be saved if necessary.
The three proposed station location boxes are 2100 to 2600 feet in length, more than enough for construction needs.
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| Charles Center Station site - this is a variant on the Camden Yards station site proposed in the Draft EIS but shifted slightly to the west and north so as to rework Charles Center and connect it to its Metro Station. |
3 - Charles Center Station
This proposed station mostly overlaps the Camden Yards station which has already been found to be feasible in the Draft EIS, but this revision extends slightly to the north and west, rather than the east and south. It therefore saves the Bank of America Building, the historic Otterbein Church and the Federal Reserve Bank. However, it still requires the demolition of the Garmatz Federal Building and a large portion of the Convention Center. It also requires taking the Fallon Federal Building just north of Lombard Street, a somewhat older building that is very poorly situated as a wall which divides the south end of Charles Center from the Inner Harbor. This causes great problems for pedestrian circulation through the plazas of Charles Center. Demolition of the Fallon Building would be a major net enhancement to its surrounding area.
This station box would also extend northward to the Charles Center Metro Station though the empty open pit where the Mechanic Theater was demolished. Combined with the elimination of the Fallon Building, this would open up great opportunities for new urban attractions in Charles Center. More background is contained in
this blog post.
This plan could also be combined with a previous city plan to demolish and replace much of the Convention Center with varied uses, including a new arena to replace the adjacent obsolete facility just to the west.
The station box would be up to about 2200 feet in length, which is more than for the currently proposed plan. Access to the Camden MARC and light rail station would be about the same as the current plan.
In sum, this "tweak" would impact portions of downtown that need to be impacted, most notably in south Charles Center, and save the buildings that ought to be saved.
That goal also should apply to any Baltimore MagLev station plan, which would be a major public face for how this city would present and position itself to the rest of the country and particularly to the Northeast Corridor between DC and New York. Like Charles Center, the light rail corridor and the Shot Tower/Old Town corridor, all greatly in need of the kind of development push which the MagLev project would provide.
The city cannot afford to blow this opportunity. We must count on the Maryland Department of Transportation to be Baltimore's advocate in the MagLev planning process.
Charles Center Station seems like a decent compromise if not perfect with lots of resulting (though expensive of course) opportunity.
ReplyDeleteThanks for weighing in. You're probably right. I've tried not to speculate too much, but that's the kind of tweak that is most plausible when proceeding from the DEIS to a "Locally Preferred Alternative", whereas the others are bigger departures.
DeleteHere's the comment which I submitted for the MagLev Environmental Impact Statement on April 24th:
ReplyDeleteBoth options for the Baltimore MagLev station are not only unacceptable, but almost surely infeasible as well.
The elevated Cherry Hill station area's vertical alignment to the north would collide with the structure of Interstate 95. Northward from there, it would then be unable to return into a tunnel to proceed under downtown. These insurmountable conditions are shown nowhere in the voluminous DEIS reports. The proposed location of the station itself is sufficiently obscure and bizarre that its impact has been given practically no scrutiny by local, citywide or regional communities.
The underground Downtown station option's excavation would require mass destruction of a huge and densely developed portion of the heart of the city, including five major and highly significant buildings, while still providing only poor access to the regional transit system.
Fortunately, there are remedies for these problems.
The Cherry Hill concept can be saved by shifting the station southward to the area between the Patapsco Avenue and Baltimore Highlands light rail stations. This area is more than sufficiently clear and open so that a "cut and cover" station can be built with acceptable impacts. The adjacent area along Patapsco Avenue eastward toward the Patapsco River and Interstate 895 would also be a great transit-oriented development site. Moreover, this station would be close enough to the airport that upgraded and integrated light rail service would obviate the need for an airport MagLev station, making this by far the least expensive and most expedient alternative for the project as a whole.
The Downtown station option can be saved by tweaking the alignment slightly north and west so that its excavation can avoid the modern and highly functional 17-story Bank of Baltimore building, the irreplaceable historic Otterbein Church and the Federal Reserve complex. The shifted station would instead take the Fallon Federal building, an older and largely dysfunctional structure which constitutes an anti-urban barrier between Charles Center and the Inner Harbor. This station would also be positioned to provide integrated access to the Charles Center Metro Station and enable the creation of a comprehensive multi-modal rail transit hub which the city has always lacked.
A third station option would be in the Old Town area just east and north of the Shot Tower Metro Station. While this is quite near the fastest growing section of downtown and has superb access to Interstate 83, it still has plenty of room for the feasible demolition of vacant, abandoned and non-essential structures, including the highly distressed Old Town Mall area and the expendable central post office. This large station area would also provide highly flexible accommodation of a wide range of alignment options.
Since this third option is slightly beyond the end of this initial phase of the MagLev project, it may be advantageous to schedule it as part of a subsequent Phase Two, and thus limiting Phase One to end at either the BWI Airport or Patapsco Avenue station.
In sum, the three options contained here are not only far more feasible than those in the DEIS report, they are also far more flexible. For more information on these options, see:
https://baltimoreinnerspace.blogspot.com/2021/02/three-city-maglev-stations-that-would.html
https://baltimoreinnerspace.blogspot.com/2021/01/downtown-maglev-station-needs-to-move.html