Port Covington

URBANIZING PORT COVINGTON

Port Covington is a perfect example of the problem that urban planners have with timing. Back in the 1980s, the huge old Western Maryland railroad yard on the north shore of the Middle Branch near I-95 was carved up by the CSX Corporation for redevelopment. City planners recognized this as a fantastic site for a huge bustling high density urban development, with a great waterfront, strong proximity to downtown and excellent access to Interstate 95. But a recession, a savings and loan scandal, and ongoing urban malaise made for lousy timing for any kind of grand ambitious vision.

But there was one business organization that was still thinking big - the Baltimore Sun. The Sun was talking about building a huge new headquarters out in the suburbs. They wanted to convey their optimism for the growth of their newspaper by elbowing their way into Washington Post territory.

This was viewed as a dire threat by Baltimore boosters. What could be worse than losing your hometown newspaper to suburban flight?

So a big complicated land deal was worked out between the Sun, the City and CSX to provide the Sun with a huge parcel in Port Covington. The Sun built a sprawling state-of-the-art printing press on one part of the land (see photo above), but they had plenty left over, including virtually the entire vacant plot shown above, and an even bigger parcel on the other side of the building. The Sun's original stated intention was to save the rest of the land for the eventual relocation of the entire business, editorial and other offices that are still located in their longtime downtown headquarters. The Sun's Port Covington compound was so big that they even gave it its own name - Sun Park - which sounds vaguely Korean, perhaps suggesting the perceived remoteness of it all. But the name doesn't seem to have caught on.

The Sun printing press set the tone for the rest of Port Covington - a huge horizontal structure that seems almost insignificant on a piece of land that is very much larger, surrounded by vast open spaces which in turn are surrounded by a security fence and gates that give it a forbidding feeling.

It is hard to say how potent the Sun's suburban threat ever was. Wouldn't the Sun lose its very identity if they moved away from their city home? Two decades later, the Sun's editorial headquarters is still downtown and Port Covington remains merely a remote adjunct for printing. It's not in the suburbs but it might as well be. Meanwhile, the newspaper business as a whole is suffering from a deepening identity crisis as "professional journalists" are getting increasingly defensive about the threats from other media, especially the internet.

But the vast Sun compound did establish the course for Port Covington's further development as a huge otherworldly enclave that still seems oblivious to the surrounding city. The only other significant project in the ensuing time has been a Wal-Mart and Sam's Club - two brands of the same retail empire.

Wal-Mart and Sam's Club were built straight from the suburban mold - sprawling one story buildings next to a vast sea of parking and situated so that they totally turned their backs to the adjacent waterfront. This is astonishing in a city that is seen as a pioneer and leader in the whole concept of waterfront-oriented development.

Here's a photo of Sam's Club, blocking the waterfront behind it. There's also lots of land left over.

It is hard to say whether the Sun complex or Wal-Mart/Sam's Club has been the worst drag on achieving Port Covington's urban potential. They each have their own iconic value. Wal-Mart, of course, is almost universally perceived by "progressives" to represent all that is wrong with capitalism, America, the globalism conspiracy, etc., etc. Similarly, bigtime newspapers are perceived by "the vast right wing conspiracy" as the source for liberal propaganda and the creeping march toward pinko socialism, etc., etc. But politics makes strange bedfellows, and the Sun must cater to Wal-Mart to attract advertising. The Sun also defended Wal-Mart against State legislation aimed at forcing them to pay more employee health care benefits.

Whatever way you look at it, the Sun and Wal-Mart are two huge blotches against the previously vast potential of Port Covington as a productive urban area.

THE BRIGHT SIDE OF PORT COVINGTON

The good news is that neither Wal-Mart or the Sun are doing very well at Port Covington, so they should both be amenable to change. It has recently been announced that Sam's Club is closing up the Port Covington store, so it should be interesting to see what takes its place. Will it be an obviously marginal business of some sort, chosen as a short-run space filler? That would probably be the best-case scenario, because in the long run, the Sam's Club building must go - it occupies and sqaunders one of Port Covington's choicest waterfront sites.

Here is a look at a waterfront view from the rear of Sam's Club that hardly anyone gets to see.

Meanwhile, the Sun has a dwindling circulation and so they probably realize that the huge swaths of land that surround their Port Covington printing press should not be held for future newspaper expansion, but should instead be treated as an economic asset for future development.

Other good news is that the rest of the South Baltimore peninsula is almost totally built-out now, and Port Covington is the final frontier. There is still more pent-up demand for the type of urban environment enjoyed by people in Federal Hill, Riverside Park and Locust Point. So the challenge will be to make Port Covington the next phase in the growth of South Baltimore, rather than the isolated wasteland that it is now. Planners have notoriously bad timing, but perhaps now is finally the time for the urbanization of Port Covington.


Finally, there is the fact that Port Covington is so huge that even with a couple of giant blotches like the Sun and Wal-Mart, there is still plenty of space to work with. The security fence surrounding the Sun printing plant site can be significantly tightened up, essentially treating it as a buffer in a manner similar to the very secure Federal Reserve Bank compound in Otterbein. This would free up a vast amount of new acreage for development.

Wal-Mart should be retained and treated as an anomaly. In the post modern era, irony is an accepted sign of the times. Wal-Mart is as image conscious as any other big retail business and they should relish the opportunity to adapt themselves to a real urban environment. They should realize by now that the old suburban paradigm certainly does not work at Port Covington, so in order to thrive, they should be ready for something new. On the other hand, Wal-Mart is already right next to the huge Locke Insulator complex which predates everything else around it, so the scale of the buildings can be worked with. Wal-Mart can thus be a transition between old heavy industry - no longer an aggressive threat in the post-modern world - and the new urban world of Port Covington.


The entrance to Wal-Mart has a great perpendicular view of the waterfront, so that can be exploited. Wal-Mart's parking lot is the key to creating an urban environment. It is now essentially a "land bank" for creating a new urbanism out of the old asphalt wasteland. With Sam's Club out of the way, this will become valuable waterfront land with real streets, buildings oriented to the streets and the water, and decked parking.

CREATING AN URBAN IDENTITY

If we could turn back the clock to the 1980s and convince everyone that there would indeed be a time in the not too distant future when the demand for a South Baltimore style urban environment could overflow into Port Covington, then obviously the Sun, Sam's Club and Wal-Mart as we know them could have been averted. We would now have a blank canvas on which to construct the ideal Port Covington urban utopia.

But we don't, which may be OK. Urban planners often seem to do better when they have constraints anyway. The sensation of unlimited space is a major part of what got us into trouble in Port Covington in the first place, just as it often tarnished suburbia and the wild western frontier. The reasoning was: Port Covington had a huge amount of land, so why not just give huge amounts of it to the Sun and Wal-Mart? It was the modern version of 40 acres and a mule.

But urban space often is more successful with a context and a legacy than it is with a blank canvas. At Port Covington, we'll probably need both. We need all the help we can get.

Even Wal-Mart is a start. The City would love to have an urban Wal-Mart. Well, maybe the yuppies would hate it, but even they need to have something to rag about, and contrary to statements from some quarters, the entire city has not yet turned totally yuppie and there are still some people who live in houses worth under $200,000 and on down to about $2,000. These people need Wal-Mart products even if the vocal urbanistas don't.

So since the City has been unable to attract Wal-Mart to downtown or any other urbanized area, the City needs to try to extend its urbanized area to Wal-Mart.

There are a few other themes to work with. There is the new cruise ship terminal at the east end of Port Covington near the south end of Key Highway. Putting the cruise ships at Canton Crossing or Allied/Harbor Point was previously contemplated, but the conclusion was that they weren't really all that appropriate for a high density urban area after all, so they ended up at Port Covington. So what we have here isn't really an urban activity generator, but just another icon - a pleasant reminder of Gopher, Julie, Issac, and Doc on the "Love Boat". We'll take what we can get.

On the other end of Port Covington west of Hanover Street, there is a new non-museum complex being built by our National Aquarium. No, it's not an Inner Harbor-style activity generator, but it should be nice to look at.


Then there is Nick's Fish House (pictured above), wedged on a very isolated piece of the waterfront between the Locke Insulator complex and the Hanover Street Bridge. It's oldie and moldy enough so that some legends could be written about it, and these legends could serve the purposes for creating human interest whether they are true or not. Currently, HBO's "The Wire" is using Nick's Fish House as a production staging area, so maybe the legends are being written up right now. The next step would be to adapt the legends for the new development marketing campaigns.

So perhaps there is enough life in Port Covington so that an urban scene could spontaneously erupt, lit by the spark of big developers' money.

Besides South Baltimore, there is also much anticipated zillion dollar activity in Westport that could wash over to the Port Covington side of the Middle Branch. The photo above looks west at Westport (in the background) from Port Covington. There is talk of rebuilding the old Western Maryland Railroad bridge between the two sides for pedestrians and bikes. But it would probably have to wait until enough new "critical mass" was built in Westport to give it a good reason to be built and not a bridge from nowhere, much less a bridge to nowhere.

All of this would be great, but it is probably not enough.

CREATING AN URBAN LIFELINE

Vast open spaces are not the only asset of Port Covington which could also be a liability. The excellent highway access is also a double edged sword. The big Interstate 95 overpass with McComas Street underneath creates a formidable barrier on the north side of Port Covington, and Hanover Street is also a barrier on the west side. The ramps, the loops, and the "jughandle" at Hanover and Cromwell help to preserve the traffic carrying capacity of the road system but add to the confusion. Hanover Street also bisects Port Covington into two pieces.

Not much can be done about the traffic. This road system channels traffic so that the traffic patterns in the rest of the South Baltimore are tolerable. Before the I-95/395 system was built, traffic on Hanover Street was intolerable all the way northward to Montgomery Street and the Inner Harbor, but now much of the traffic is channeled away and Hanover Street north of Port Covington is fairly livable (although not as livable as it should be.)

The "jughandle" at the intersection of Hanover and Cromwell Streets cannot carry much more traffic than it does now, and converting it to a normal intersection with left turn lanes would be much worse, especially for traffic coming off of I-95. It would also be exceedingly expensive to widen the Hanover Street bridge to add capacity.


The original Port Covington plan from the 1980s called for new roads to be built north of Cromwell Street, including an underpass under Hanover Street where railroad tracks used to go (see photo above taken from Dickman Street west of Hanover). This would create a new unimpeded connection between the portions of Port Covington on either side of Hanover Street, and provide a route for traffic to divert away from the jughandle.

The land for the road that would connect from this underpass to Cromwell Boulevard was reserved and never sold to the Sun. This right of way is shown above, looking northward from Cromwell. Hanover Street is just up the embankment to the left, while the Sun property is delineated by the white fence to the right.

Building these streets would allow the traffic jughandle to be eliminated and replaced with a street grid with more uniform urban design standards. Creating these new streets would be a way to open up a large amount of land to intense development on the western portion of the Sun property just to the east of Hanover Street and to the west of Hanover near Dickman Street.

This could be a strong impetus to reconfigure much of the Sun site to make it more amenable to urban development, from Hanover Street all the way eastward to the Wal-Mart site. The key is to make all of Port Covington flow in an integrated manner, to create a perception of a large waterfront community. Right now, the Sun property does not feel like waterfront land. It does not even feel like it is attached to anything, for that matter. But geographically, the Sun property is at the heart of all of Port Covington. A new urban grid street system that flows from the waterfront across Cromwell Boulevard into the Sun site and then proceeds under Hanover Street to the west will truly integrate everything. The Sun land will then become far more valuable for something new, rather than simply part of a long vain wait for another golden age of newsprint.

The street built in the grass shown above can be given special significance by giving it one of Baltimore's most venerable names - Charles Street.

AN UMBILICAL CORD FOR URBAN TRANSIT

It indeed appears to be feasible to build an extension of either Light or Charles Street, or even both, southward from the Riverside Park neighborhood of South Baltimore into Port Covington. Both streets are slightly higher than the CSX freight tracks just beyond where the streets now end south of Wells Street, and there is sufficient room to build overpasses over the tracks.

The photo above shows the current south end of Charles Street looking north from McComas Street. The Interstate 95 structure is at the top of the photo and the CSX Locust Point Branch is at the bottom. A southern extension of Charles Street into Port Covington could weave on a bridge between these two layers.

This would allow the urban texture of South Baltimore to weave into Port Covington as well. In the photo above, the cool crenulated tower of the former Pabst Brewing Company is shown on the left side of Charles in the near background, and could serve as a symbolic transition point to South Baltimore from Port Covington.


This photo shows where such a new Charles Street extension would go as it enters Port Covington, just south of I-95. It could use either an existing underpass under McComas Street (shown above at left) or it could intersect McComas at-grade. The underpass is now occupied by a railroad track which once connected from the Western Maryland yard to the CSX Locust Point Branch. The track is still usable but does not look like it is much used, if ever. The Sun plant has a freight siding (shown above at right), just as the downtown Sun plant once had on Guilford Street. The new southward extension of Charles Street, Light Street (or the combination of both) could easily share the McComas underpass with the freight track.

There are many options for urbanizing McComas Street, which weaves around the catacombs under I-95. It does not carry a huge amount of traffic and therefore can be tailored to suit new development. The space under I-95 could be used for parking or even for a farmers market, like the downtown space under the Jones Falls Expressway. Urban development fosters such creativity.

As a result of all this, the existing urban fabric of South Baltimore could essentially be extended into Port Covington. This would be an umbilical cord for an instant sense of unity and extend South Baltimore's urban identity into Port Covington.

It would then be easy to walk or ride a bike between South Baltimore, or even downtown, and Port Covington, while never letting go of the urban connection. A local bus line would naturally follow, providing a far better alternative than the convoluted branches of the #27 and #64 lines that serve Port Covington now.

To provide maximum stimulation for new development, a streetcar line could be built down Charles and/or Light Street to Port Covington, as an extension of the line now being studied by the Charles Street Development Corporation. The full extent of the streetcar line would be from Hopkins University and Charles Village through downtown to Federal Hill to Port Covington.
A streetcar line would be the ultimate unifier for Port Covington.

We will know that Port Covington has really arrived when the same yuppies who go to the Port Covington farmer's market to buy their organic dolphin-safe vegan products then proceed onward to the reborn politically correct Wal-Mart to buy crafts for world peace made by non-sweat shop adult artisans.

MagLev

MAKING MAGLEV WORK FOR BALTIMORE

Back in the early 19th century, Baltimore was the birthplace of American railroading, and it's time to do it again. The old technology has served the Baltimore region well for the past 170 odd years, but we are overdue to create a brand new clean technological slate. We cannot ride into the future on the overtaxed MARC commuter rail system, or even on Amtrak's over-hyped Acela.

Just recently, the Maryland Transit Administration completed a study that concluded that a MagLev line between Baltimore and Washington could return an astounding 500% of its operating costs from farebox revenue, which is about ten times as much as the approximate 50% rate of return from MARC.

So why hasn't MagLev been universally embraced by planners and the public? Why hasn't the prospect of getting from Downtown Baltimore to Washington DC in only 18 minutes met with unanimous excitement, especially considering the way that the two metropolitan areas have been rapidly merging together in recent years?

Mainly because the MagLev system studied by the MTA was targeted narrowly at high priced business travellers rather than as transportation for the masses. But with a projected farebox return of 500%, the system would actually MAKE MONEY for every rider who switched from MARC to MagLev. The return on investment was set so that MagLev would look attractive to private investors who would underwrite much of the capital cost, something that is extremely rare in the transit business.

And yet any private entrepreneur knows that one does not maximize profits by maximizing the percentage rate of return on operating cost. If the MagLev fares were reduced so that it would appeal to a larger number of riders, including car and MARC commuters, both profits and ridership could increase dramatically even if the farebox recovery rate went down to "only" somewhat over 100%.

WHY MAGLEV?

I'm not enough of a technology expert to know that magnetic levitation is the absolute best technology for high speed ground transport, but MagLev has been demonstrated successfully in limited applications in China and Germany, and it has the right raw ingredients - it is fast (200 to 300 mph), it is clean and efficient and it most of all, it lends itself to convergence with other new technologies.

The primary reason MagLev is so potentially attractive is its high speed of 200 to 300 mph. But it is not the speed itself which is most crucial - it's what can be done with such high speeds. It means that the system must be fully automated, because human operators cannot hope to negotiate a fixed guideway at such a high speed. High speed also means that stations need to be off-line so that a train stopped at one station does not clog up the line to prevent trains from passing to get to any other station.

Automation, in turn, means that the operating cost of the system will not depend on the frequency of trains. With an automated system, there is no longer any significant reason to run long trains with a single locomotive set and a single operating crew. Many smaller and more frequent MagLev trains will be just as economical to operate as the traditional bigger and less frequent trains.

Smaller and more frequent trains also mean smaller stations with smaller platforms and smaller guideways. This will hopefully mean that the very tight railroad tunnel under Howard Street in Downtown Baltimore can be used for Maglev. This ancient tunnel is so obsolete for conventional trains that one of the two tracks had to be removed a long time ago so that freight trains could fit, and even so, modern double stack freight trains must still avoid it and detour through Pennsylvania.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of automation would be in real-time scheduling and dispatching of MagLev trains, which could respond instantaneously to passenger demand. Trains would be small enough so that as soon as a sufficient number of passengers were present who wanted to go to a given destination, a train would whisk into place to take them there. Inefficient revenue-robbing empty seats would be a thing of the past. Supply and demand would be perfectly synchronized.

NOT JUST COMMUTER RAIL

Automated dispatching and off-line stations would also mean that there would be no reason to limit MagLev service to long distance trips between central cities. MagLev would provide service between downtown and suburbs, just like a conventional light or heavy rail transit system, as well as between suburbs.

Using the old Howard Street tunnel for MagLev would mean that service could be provided up through the Jones Falls valley, perhaps providing service from Downtown to Towson that would take about 8 minutes or so. An ideal location for the Downtown station could be the old Baltimore Arena site at Howard and Baltimore Streets, where direct connections could be created to the heavy and light rail systems.

The Towson MagLev station should be located so that the central light rail line can be adjusted to serve it, and thus provide a rail transit connection to Timonium and Hunt Valley.

The high speed of MagLev would also mean that a route could be relatively circuitous but still efficient. The same line that travels between Downtown and Towson could proceed along the Beltway and White Marsh Boulevard to White Marsh (the additional trip distance taking perhaps five more minutes) and then on to Aberdeen where it would join in with Amtrak and MARC and serve the new expanded military base there.

Between Baltimore and Washington, there would be no need to limit stops to just the airport or New Carrollton. Additional stations could be provided on branch lines to Fort Meade/Odenton, Columbia and perhaps other places. The location of all stations on branches would preserve the speed and capacity of the trunk line, to facilitate its eventual expansion to Philadelphia, New York and elsewhere.

Off-line stations also mean that the branch lines could be located where the stations could be most intimately connected with local destinations and development. MagLev would certainly be a sufficient lure so that every station could support a very high density. Land would certainly become too valuable near any MagLev station to support parking except for very highest priced commuters.

This in turn would further increase the value of MagLev in getting cars off the highways. MagLev would be fast and attractive enough so that riders would be willing to ride feeder buses to stations. Right now, feeder bus service is of limited value to MARC riders because most people do not want to take a 30 minute bus ride on top of a 45 minute train ride. But if the train ride was reduced to 15 or 18 minutes, a 30 minute bus ride wouldn't seem so onerous for the average commuter.

The key word here is the AVERAGE commuter. Contrary to the MTA targeting of MagLev to affluent business riders, the whole concept behind MagLev lends itself more to use by average mainstream commuters, where it could have a huge impact on development and travel patterns throughout the region.

This draws a strong parallel to air travel. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, airlines catered almost exclusively to affluent riders. Then at first gradually, and then suddenly with deregulation, airlines discovered the mainstream mass market. Nowadays, the ridership of most jet flights has more in common with the average commuter bus than it does with the clientele of fifty years ago, when ironically, commuter buses were also more in the mainstream than they are now.

Then when air travel had become mainstreamed, the supersonic Concorde was introduced as the new travel mode of the affluent few. As we now know, this did not work. Concorde never caught on because the affluent few are just too few, and Concorde had no economies of scale.

Similarly, the MTA has attempted to plan for MagLev as another Concorde, and that simply would not work. Perhaps it could start out that way if technical constraints limited its capacity in its early years. But in order for MagLev to be truly effective, it must become a mainstream mode of travel, just as jet airliners have become. All signs point in that direction.

MagLev needs to attract major private investment, which would be recovered through its inherent efficiency and economies of scale, and also by the increased land values at its stations. The era of billions in up-front public funding for transit or highways is just about over.

To do all this, MagLev would need to be a truly mainstream travel mode. It should be able to replace commuter rail for many trips in the MARC corridor. It should also replace many of the trips now envisioned for the Towson and White Marsh corridors in the MTA's ill-fated 2002 regional rail transit plan. MagLev stations should all become regional growth centers and hubs for a comprehensive feeder bus network.

And finally, the Maryland MagLev system should be the first link in a comprehensive new inter-regional rail system which would serve the entire northeastern United States, bringing Baltimore into the national forefront, much as it was 170 years ago as the birthplace of American railroading.

Regional Transportation Plan

WHY IS THE BALTIMORE REGION'S 30 YEAR TRANSPORTATION PLAN SO PATHETIC?

That is not a rhetorical question. There really is a simple answer.

It is not simply political inertia and bureaucratic bungling. Or political bungling and bureaucratic inertia, even if there are large measures of all that in the process.

But there can be no denying that the new plan prepared by the Baltimore Metropolitan Council is a total stiff for anyone who believes that Baltimore City needs to be the heart and soul around which the region's future growth takes place.

The following are the significant transportation projects in the City Baltimore which are listed in the plan to be built over the next 30 years:

First, there is a portion of the transit Red Line between Woodlawn and Patterson Park. Then there is an East Baltimore MARC commuter rail station, currently envisioned to be north of either Hopkins Bayview Medical Campus or the Hopkins Biotech Park, with no regional rail transit connections in the plan at either location.

There are five city road projects in the plan: 1-Boston Street railroad overpass (to eliminate freight train conflicts), 2-Keith Avenue/Broening Highway interchange (serving the General Motors site), 3-Upgrading the JFX/Northern Parkway interchange, 4-Widening the Baltimore Washington Parkway with new ramps (to support the Westport project), and 5-A new highway connection from MLK Boulevard to the Jones Falls Expressway (from Howard Street through the University of Baltimore Bolton Yard parcel?)

There are also short pieces of two hike-bike trails into west Baltimore, one at Caton-Loudon and the other along the Gwynns Falls.

That's it. That is the entire sum total of what is in store for the city over the next 30 years. (Obviously, these people don't pay attention to my blog.)

The plan can be downloaded from www.baltometro.org/T2035/T2035draft.pdf

THE REASON THE PLAN IS SO PATHETIC

The reason the regional plan is so pathetic is very simple: There is a federal requirement that all regional metropolitan plans must be based on real actual funding projections. Regional plans must not be mere "wish lists".

This is actually a good rule. It requires that regions actually set priorities and not simply produce a bloated list of everything that everyone wants. It is also good because it lays out the real intent of the regional leaders as clearly and starkly as possible, allowing readers to see beyond any flowery rhetoric.

But real financial constraints can be a real downer. This is especially true for transit. The plan must account not only for the potentially huge cost of transit construction, especially for tunnels, but the plan also needs to consider operating costs as well. Operating costs are an ongoing year-after-year expense which eats into the potential budget for capital construction of new transit lines.

Transit's dwindling farebox recovery rate is a major issue. The MTA used to recover 50% of its operating costs from the farebox, and that is now down to about 40%, and if the region was going to make an honest projection, it would probably be projected to go even lower over the next 30 years.

Transit operating deficits are such a major issue that it is questionable as to whether the region could even AFFORD to gain a significant increase of the region's trips via transit. As it stands, the regional projection is that the percentage of trips by transit is anticipated to stay the same over the next three decades. No progress at all.

Such is not a great aspiring vision for the future of the Baltimore Region. The plan projects that peak period congestion will increase over 30 years by 258%, using the technical definition based on the region's travel simulation computer model. And that projection is in spite of the overwhelming share of the capital budget going for expansion of the suburban highway system rather than for transit.

So here is the trap the region is in: More and wider highways can't solve our congestion problems and we can't afford the kind of transit that requires huge subsidies and doesn't go where the new jobs and development are anyway.

HOW TO BREAK THE VICIOUS CYCLE OF PLANNING PATHETIC-NESS

We normally think of great urban plans as being sweeping visions by men such as Daniel Burnham (Chicago) or Pierre L'Enfant (Washington, DC) or Frederick Olmstead (all over the place). Maybe that kind of planning can still be done. I know I've given it my best shot, and others have too. But Burnham and his ilk did not have to deal with 21st century political and fiscal realities.

What we need now is a plan that responds to the current cold heartless bureaucratic rules of metropolitan plan making. Here are the steps:

1- EMBRACE EXPRESS TOLL LANES NOW - The State has already made a billion dollar commitment on Interstate 95, but what is really needed is not a futile excuse to build more and bigger roads. What is needed is a way to manage our limited transportation resources. Congestion pricing must be applied when and where we have congestion, which is NOW on EXISTING HIGHWAYS, not after the construction ordeal is completed. We need to apply variable electronic tolls on existing highway lanes, in order to adjust traffic demand to maintain the highest possible flow rate (clogged roads carry LESS traffic, not more) and to shift excess demand to off-peak times and to transit and carpools. This will increase the ability of our EXISTING transportation system to actually carry PEOPLE, not clogged cars.

To deal with the political fallout, the State should pledge that a certain amount of the revenue will be returned to the local jurisdictions to fulfill any desired local need, including tax relief, so that motorists will realize that this is not just a excuse for the State to make money.

2- INCLUDE MAGLEV IN THE 30 YEAR YEAR PLAN - Maybe you might think that a transit line based on magnetic levitation is just pie-in-the-sky dreaming, but the Maryland Transit Administration has already done a detailed study that says that it can actually pay for itself and attract rich private sector investors, unlike every other form of transit we have. Even if you don't believe it, future technological advancement should be plugged into the equation of the 30 year plan. Could anyone 30 years ago have imagined the kind of digital technology revolution we would be experiencing now? Technology is the great wildcard of the future and no one should deny that it can bring great changes. The long range plan should not simply assume that there will be no major technological advancements in the next 30 years. If we don't plan for future change, we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.

The same MagLev assumptions that were justifiable in the MTA's report are justifiable in the 30 year long range plan, but the long range plan should have a wider vision. There is no reason in theory why MagLev could not provide the same advantages on an 8 minute trip from Towson or Columbia to Downtown Baltimore as it can provide for an 18 minute trip from Downtown Baltimore to Washington DC. The region is expanding to include both, and MagLev, in concept at least if not technological execution, can provide an appropriate and exciting future scenario to reflect this.

3- EMPHASIZE LOCAL TRANSIT TO EXPAND RIDERSHIP AND REDUCE DEFICITS - The current "business model" of the MTA transit system has doomed them to losing large amounts of money. The MTA charges the same fare for expensive long trips as for short ones, and short trips are the ones least likely to be captured because of poor transit reliability and long wait times relative to trip times. What is needed is really good local transit, but not the meandering loops of "shuttle bugs" like in Mondawmin and Hampden which have very poor farebox recovery rates because they combine the disadvantages of short distance and long distance transit.

A streetcar system could be an example of how a really high quality short-distance transit system in high density transit-friendly areas could be built on a "clean slate" from the ground up, which would justify reasonably high fares for short trips. Such a network would not cost an inordinate amount of money to build and would unlock the greatest untapped transit market available.

4- REALLY TRULY RESTRUCTURE THE MTA TRANSIT SYSTEM - The operative word is STRUCTURE. Every change should be integral to the entire system to minimize redundancy and maximize clarity. Comprehensive transit hubs should be established to ensure that anyone can get from any one place to any other place in the entire system.

5 - REGIONAL RAIL SHOULD BE A BACKBONE, NOT A CIRCULATION SYSTEM - It is absurd for the Red Line to end anywhere near Patterson Park. The purpose of regional rail transit must be to haul huge numbers of people on the highest density trunk of the network. That can't be done to a quiet residential and park area with no geographic setting for a large transit feeder hub. It is particularly absurd since there is no place near Patterson Park for a fast reasonable cost surface transit alignment. The function of regional rail transit is extremely important, but it is limited to the highest volume, highest connectivity corridors. Longer distance suburban trips should take place by buses, MARC Commuter Rail and eventually perhaps by MagLev, while shorter trips should be by feeder buses, shuttles run by institutions and perhaps by streetcars.

Following these concepts, the long range plan could be converted into a plan that could radically change the transportation complexion of the region. What's more, the system would stack up well by the rules and scoring system that are already in place for the evaluation of regional transportation projects. We could beat the mindless status quo at its own game.

Interstate 95 to White Marsh

BILLION DOLLAR TRANSIT LINE TO WHITE MARSH IS NOW UNDER CONSTRUCTION

While transit buffs have been arguing for decades about what kind of transit system to build in the Baltimore region, the Maryland Department of Transportation has already quietly begun construction on a BILLION DOLLAR transit line between Baltimore City and White Marsh.

That's right. MDOT has dug into their deep pockets and has written a check with the "B" word, as in $1,000,000,000.00. That's a whole 'nother zero order of magnitude above what they think they want to spend on a rail transit project, such as the Red Line if that project ever gets going. It's the same number of zeros as the InterCounty Connector, which has generated way more discussion and controversy.

In contrast, the Billion Dollar line to White Marsh, whose early skeleton is framed by the suburban houses shown above, has produced practically no discussion. Yet it is literally right in our backyards.

It's commonly called "Express Toll Lanes", but make no mistake. It is a transit project because it has a potential future impact on the transportation system which is commensurate with its huge price tag.

Over the past several decades, the first die was cast regarding transit between the City and White Marsh, by the steady reductions in building density which have occurred in the White Marsh area. This has tended to make rail transit infeasible and unjustifiable. The second die was cast by the leap frogging of new development into the outer suburbia of Harford and Cecil Counties, most recently culminating in the announced major expansion of the Aberdeen military base, commonly called BRAC.

The 2002 MTA rail transit plan called for a very expensive Metro extension from Hopkins Hospital, first to Morgan University and eventually to White Marsh. But hardly anyone has talked seriously about extending Metro to White Marsh since this plan was released five years ago. Any recent discussion of regional transit in this corridor has instead centered around the MARC commuter rail line, not a conventional rail transit line.

But regardless, residents are still nervous about suburban growth, and that nervousness even extends to the developers. The owner of the retail outlet mall in Perryville, just the other side of the Susquehanna River in Cecil County, was complaining about how the toll across the I-95 Susquehanna River bridge was keeping customers away. Meanwhile, most other folks were complaining that there were too many cars on the six lane bridge, regardless of whether they were going to the outlet mall or not. Too much traffic or too little traffic? Take your pick.

All that talk has very little correlation with what MDOT is actually doing, which is spending a billion dollars on the Express Toll Lanes far to the south, to be completed in the next four years or so. This is like the day after tomorrow in transportation planning terms.

At that time, what we will have is essentially TWO (count 'em two) I-95's from White Marsh into the City, with a whole bunch of new ramps to get you there, and electronic tolls to distinguish between the Express Toll Lanes and the non-express non-toll lanes. If you've ever experienced the ramp-athon between I-95 and I-495 in Virginia with all the spaghetti to the Shirley Highway express and non-express lanes and the Capitol Beltway, you have an idea of what to expect.

IT'S JUST BASIC ECONOMICS

The term that we ivory-tower types use for the White Marsh I-95 project is "Congestion Pricing". It is the same thing that luxury resort hotels use to keep from being overcrowded on the most popular weekends. When hotels anticipate being overbooked, they raise their prices to the extent needed to keep demand in check. This keeps people from lining up in the lobby disrupting the hotel business while waiting for a bargain room on the peak weekends, and it also tends to increase the hotel demand during the non-peak weekends. Total demand for hotel rooms thus increases, because there is no bottleneck during peak capacity times and there is increased demand during non-peak times.

In the highway business, things are apparently a lot sneakier, however, because the lanes next to the Express Toll Lanes will still be open to everyone, without a toll, so these lanes will still be allowed to get as clogged up as they can. The people who are standing still in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the free lanes will have the privilege of looking at the adjacent Express Toll lanes and having their noses rubbed in the fact that they didn't ante up to pay for the pleasure of riding congestion free.

But that is not the worst of it. The crazy part is that when the Billion Dollar Express Toll Lanes are completed, that portion of Interstate 95 will then have the highest traffic capacity and least congestion of any section of the highway. There will still be seriously increasing congestion on the sections of the highway feeding into the Express Toll lanes, but there will tend to be much less congestion, if any, on either the toll or adjacent free lanes where the new billion dollar lanes have been built.

Users of the Express Toll Lanes will have to fight the freebie riff-raff traffic in a sea of congestion just to get to the toll lanes, thus nullifying the advantage of actually using the toll lanes.

There is only one solution for this. That is, the express toll lanes must be extended well beyond the new billion dollar construction onto to the adjacent sections of the old Interstate 95 highway that exists already and are not widened. At the very least, the express toll lanes must be extended from the Fort McHenry Tunnel to the Susquehanna River bridge, which are two very well known bottlenecks.

The advantage of the congestion pricing can only be attained if it applies to the sections of the highway which are the most congested, and these highway segments will always be those that have NOT been widened.

That leads to other inevitable conclusions: To gain the benefit of the Express Toll Lanes, they should be implemented NOW. And the benefit of the toll lanes has nothing to do with spending a Billion Dollars to widen the road. The only money that needs to be spent is on the delineation and electronic management of the express toll lanes, not the widening.

Another conclusion that any manager of a decent hotel will tell you is that peak period pricing should apply to all the rooms (and all the highway lanes), not just some of them. Actually, it is not just hotel managers who can tell you that. Anyone who has taken Economics 101 from any non-Marxist professor can tell you.

WHAT'S TRANSIT GOT TO DO WITH IT?

What does all this have to do with transit? Well, the obvious thing is that MDOT has shot its billion dollar wad in the White Marsh corridor, leaving less money for transit. Secondly, there is still going to be plenty of congestion, unless MDOT does the unthinkable and converts the entire stretch of I-95 to congestion pricing and raises the tolls high enough to make people realize the full supply-demand cost of using the road.

If MDOT did that, the traffic volume on the road would not go down very much, because enough people would recognize that they could save a lot of money by shifting their trips to off-peak periods - just as luxury hotels still fill up when they charge their highest rates, and become even fuller than they otherwise would have during off-peak periods when they charge lower rates. But it would be too logical for MDOT to do all that.

Instead, MDOT will no doubt continue to allow I-95 to clog up and grind to a congested halt at bottleneck points, which reduces the overall traffic flow volume on the highway.

This is where transit comes in. The greatest beneficiary of congestion pricing is transit. Buses will be able to use the Express Toll Lanes in a highly cost-effective way. Never mind that they are called "Lexus Lanes", kowtowing to the rich. They are also "MTA Lanes" and "Greyhound Lanes". When a person cannot afford the toll in their private car, they will see that transit which uses the same toll lanes is a true bargain.

The Express Toll Lanes should be recognized as the best thing that could ever happen to transit in the I-95 corridor. The more congested the free lanes feeding into the Express Toll lanes are, the more pressure there will be to extend the toll lanes - immediately, rather than after a billion dollar widening project.

Even MDOT cannot remain blind forever to the golden opportunity of Express Toll Lanes for providing better transit in expressway corridors.

This should lead eventually to the realization that the mission of toll lane management and mass transit management is one and the same. MDOT now operates two MTAs. One MTA, the Maryland Transit Administration, operates the transit system. The other MTA, the Maryland Transportation Authority (often called the MdTA as if "Md" stands for something different than "M") operates the toll facilities.

The MTA and the MdTA should merge into a single agency, collecting tolls from cars and running transit on the same roads at the same time. If they make too much money (which they damn well should except for the fact that they're bureaucrats), they should give it to the State general fund so that the politicians can lower the State's other taxes. That's what is done in Delaware, the land of rip-off I-95 tolls and tax free shopping.

Maybe MDOT has thought all this through, and that is why they have been so quiet about their billion dollar entry into the world of congestion pricing, great transit and lower taxes.

Nahhhhhh.... If you recall, MDOT tried a similar ploy the last time they widened I-95 in Harford County, but with "High Occupancy Vehicles" as the ruse. They slapped up signs over the new lanes saying that at some time in the "future", the lanes would be reserved only for HOVs. Later they quietly took down the signs. But this time, the stakes are higher. Let's not get fooled again...

Streetcars - Part 2

STREETCAR ICON MAP

Sometimes, bad graphics are good enough. In contrast, it often takes a lot of experience and expertise to confuse people. Here's my crude rendition of what a Baltimore streetcar map could look like, done on the Microsoft Paint software thrown-in with Windows XP.

If downtown Baltimore had a simple streetcar system like this, you could go pretty much everywhere you need to go in the area where it would most likely occur to you that you'd want to take transit anyway. Although if you wanted to go to, say, White Marsh Mall, all that parking out there would immediately dispel any thought of leaving your car behind. If you didn't have a car but you still wanted to go to White Marsh, you'd obviously have to do more research.

But one map shouldn't tell you everything about everything anyway. That would be information overload and would hopelessly confuse matters.

Maybe the map above should be color-keyed to show routes. Maybe if I had a good idea as to whether the Charles Village trolleys should go to Fells Point or to Federal Hill, I would have done that.

But maybe some Charles Village trolleys should go to each place. And maybe you shouldn't worry about that when you see the trolley coming down the street. Maybe you should just get on board, and then figure out if you need to transfer somewhere to get where you're going, with the aid of some nice map on the streetcar, or the advice of the nice motorman, or an automated announcement system, or all three. And you should be able to transfer for free with a simple fare ticket system instead of paying two full fares as the MTA requires now. After all, it's not your fault that the vehicle that came along doesn't go where you want to go.

Baltimore's streetcar network should go everywhere it fits, and that is close enough together and has the development density to justify it.

If you're just joining us, the proposed streetcar system shown above is the consequence of several fortuitous circumstances:

1 - The Charles Street Development Corporation is planning a trolley line in the Charles Street corridor from the Inner Harbor to Charles Village.

2 - The Maryland Transit Administration should someday wake up and realize that their Red Line to Fells Point would make much more sense using trolleys/streetcars than oversized regional light rail trains.

3 - The MTA should also realize someday that streetcars should run on portions of the existing light rail line to integrate that line with the center of downtown, along with Howard Street.

4 - The City will eventually realize that they picked a bad plan as the winner of their recent Pratt Street design competition, and that instead of widening Pratt into a bad imitation of Les Champs Elysees, it can be ideally tailored for a streetcar line.

5 - Similarly, the City will also realize that instead of making Pratt Street look more like the incredibly oppressive and awful Light Street in the Inner Harbor, they should be narrowing Light Street to look more like what Pratt Street should be - with streetcars.

6 - By this time, the City will really be becoming the enlightened place that everyone knows we can be, and they will propose a streetcar line that magically transforms the southwest corridor from the Mount Clare B&O Railroad Museum along the historic rail right of way on the north edge of Carroll Park, and culminating at the Montgomery Park office mega-palace.

All of this is shown above, and more. And there could be much more than that.

As a result, the streetcars will become a Baltimore icon, and perhaps just coincidentally, a good transit system. And they will become so popular that the MTA won't be able to buy enough streetcar vehicles to handle the loads. So they'll have to use buses to augment the service, and people will discover quite serendipitously that buses can provide just as good service as streetcars can. San Francisco might just become the Baltimore of the west.

After all, streetcars don't have anything to do with Rice-a-Roni, but when has anyone ever used buses as a trademark for anything?

President Street

BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS

Many people in Baltimore are in love with the idea of creating wide boulevards, such as has been proposed for Pratt Street in the Inner Harbor. But let's look at what happened when the City did that to President Street on the east side of the Inner Harbor along the Jones Falls. This is also instructive because many people want to extend this boulevard northward toward the prison complexes to create an attractive interaction between the river and pedestrians, bikes and cars.

The photo above shows a bicyclist stranded in the President Street median strip waiting for traffic to clear from the vast ribbons of concrete which surround him. This also shows the conditions for pedestrians along President Street, because the cyclist has ascertained that he is better off behaving like a pedestrian than out in the traffic lanes as cyclists are supposed to be. Conditions are bad for pedestrians but even worse for cyclists.


Conditions are not terribly attractive beside the boulevard either. Here is the waterfront "promenade" sandwiched between President Street Boulevard and the Jones Falls, north of Lombard Street. It's not a gold coast - it's a quintessential dead zone.


Well, how about a place farther away from traffic where there is room for a healthy interaction between development, pedestrians and the water? The problem in the photograph above is that the City made the mistake of making the promenade between Lombard and Pratt wide enough so that parked cars just took over. It seems that cars in Baltimore will eventually take over every spot of any use to them at all if no one is around to either tow, steal or vandalize them.



Another problem with waterfront development in Baltimore is that every development needs its own monster parking garage, so that there is likely to be a monster parking garage along any given waterfront promenade, such as this one along the Jones Falls at Columbus Center. The result is yet another dead zone.



On the other side of the Jones Falls from Columbus Center, we see a dumpster from Scarlett Place that has invaded the promenade. We also see a service vehicle in the background. Service vehicles seem to have special privileges to park anywhere in Baltimore. Somebody recognized this as a problem because they put up a sign, which is as much of a response as we could hope for.


Well, how about the locations for transit oriented development? The Shot Tower Subway Station is adjacent to the Jones Falls promenade, the escalator entrance to which is shown above as the white canvas-topped pavilion under the sign for "Power Plant Live". The plaza in front of the subway entrance has become - you guessed it - an impromptu parking lot and dumpster dive.

So in sum, the President Street Boulevard and adjacent Jones Falls Promenade are bad for pedestrians and cyclists and a dead zone for development. Parked cars, trucks, garages, and dumpsters have inevitably filled the dead zone like a vacuum. President Street is also a hell hole for traffic.

And people want to do the same thing elsewhere?

Streetcars - Part 0

STREETCARS - PART ZERO

The photo simulation above shows the streetcar line proposed by the Charles Street Development Corporation ( www.charlesstreet.org/trolley ) on the Light Street connector to Calvert and Pratt Street adjacent to the Inner Harbor. This photo does an excellent job of demonstrating why streetcars can be such a great element of an urban streetscape. This is hardly a great urban street - cars are domineering and pedestrians are intimidated. Harborplace and all the other Inner Harbor activities turn their backs to this roadway. Essentially, this is just an urban obstacle.

And yet in spite of all this, the streetcar is able to "cut through" the suffocating auto domination to be a strong "presence" on the streetscape. Streetcars have the uncanny ability to be noticed, but they also thrive on other activity rather than taking anything away from it. Streetcars contribute to a great urban street in a way that regional light rail cannot because of its demands for capacity and speed.

Light Street adjacent to the Inner Harbor is in desperate need of a makeover. The photo of above certainly speaks for itself - Light Street has ten (count 'em, ten) freakin' lanes, not even including the left turn lanes or the fortress median strip. The two lanes into and two lanes out of Conway Street are certainly well used and need to remain in some form, but ten continuous lanes from Pratt to Key Highway is major overkill.

Yes, Pratt Street doesn't work very well adjacent to the Inner Harbor either, but this segment of Light Street is a far greater plague on the City. In addition, it provides the extravagant luxury of space - plenty of space to accommodate every need, especially including streetcar tracks.

The Light Street re-make should be the City's first priority, before Pratt Street, or at least at the same time. The Light Street redesign should also point the way to demonstrate what will work on Pratt Street. The current plan for Pratt Street would make it more like what Light Street looks like now, which is the worst thing the City could do, not only for streetcars but for everyone else. The Pratt Street plan is totally "over the top" indulgent grandiosity.

Streetcars thrive on balance. Planning for streetcars is a great way to ensure this balance between the many functions that make for successful commercial urban streets. If a street truly works for streetcars, that is a strong indiaction that it will work for everything else.

Light Street is also a very key link to starting a true inner city streetcar system. This streetcar line could proceed south along the redesigned Light Street from Pratt adjacent to the Inner Harbor to Key Highway at the Maryland Science Center, then continue on the narrower but still ample width of Light Street to Henrietta Street in the Federal Hill Business District.

The streetcar line could then turn westward on Henrietta and proceed past Charles Street to the end of Henrietta at Sharp Street.


At the end of Henrietta shown above, the streetcar line could proceed between the Otterbein pool (which would probably have to be slightly reconfigured) and the adjacent tennis courts.


At his point, the streetcar line would have to be put into a slight cut in order to get sufficient clearance to get underneath Interstate 395 at its overpass structure shown above.


Finally, the streetcar line would join up with the existing light rail line just prior to the Hamburg Street Station adjacent to the Ravens Stadium. MLK Boulevard just off of I-395 is the overpass shown above. Some slight adjustments to the station would be necessary, such as relocating the ramp on to the high block.

Tieing the Light Street streetcar line into the Central Light Rail line at Hamburg Street would be a great way to create an instant streetcar "system". This is probably the most functionally successful segment of the entire light rail line, and would provide a very valuable augmentation to service between the very well used Cherry Hill Station and the key station serving the soon-to-be burgeoning Westport, into the Federal Hill Business District area and then directly into the heart of the Inner Harbor.

It would probably not be practical to run the streetcars all the way to BWI-M Airport and Glen Burnie, but it would provide an easy way for anyone on light rail to transfer to get from these places to the Inner Harbor.

Moreover, it would be a great beginning to a comprehensive inner city streetcar system, connecting everything from the heart of downtown to the Charles Street Corridor to Fells Point and beyond (see previous blog article). No one could complain anymore that the light rail line serves "only" Howard Street.

No one should delude themselves into believing that streetcars alone are a substitute for an effective regional transit system, but as a way of activating and expanding downtown, streetcars are ideal. Streetcars create a strong "presence" for transit that buses cannot match and no one can miss, no matter whether they are watching from a sidewalk or behind a windshield. Light Street may be the best place to start.

Streetcars

A STREETCAR SYSTEM FOR THE 21st CENTURY: WHERE IT WOULD FIT (AND WHERE IT WON'T)

Many people confuse streetcars with regional transit like light rail or heavy rail, including the Baltimore City government and the Maryland Transit Administration.

The MTA tried to build a very streetcar-like regional transit line on Howard Street when it built the central light rail system from Hunt Valley to BWI-M Airport (photo above), but it is a bad fit for Howard Street with average speeds of less than 10 mph and the block-long trains which overwhelm the streetscape.

The MTA is trying the same thing with the regional Red Line, proposing to try to cram block-long regional trains on the even narrower and more crowded streets of Fells Point and Canton.

Mayor Dixon's transition report identified the proposed reconfiguration of Pratt Street as a way to try to accommodate the regional Red Line on that very visible and high traffic artery. But the winning entry selected by City judges in the Pratt Street design competition very definitely does NOT accommodate regional transit.

Trees

TREES: BALTIMORE'S TRULY OPPRESSED POPULATION


Trees don't vote. Trees don't threaten to move to the suburbs. Trees don't do drugs or commit crimes. Trees don't stage protest rallies. Trees don't demand equal rights. Trees just stand there and quietly do their jobs.

But a new City report says that Baltimore needs a whole lot more trees, and that the number of dead and dieing trees is far too high relative to the number of healthy ones. It's not just something we ought to put on our wish list. It is something that Baltimore NEEDS in order to be a healthy city.

Baltimore Cemetery

THREE LAYERS OF BALTIMORE

Another great Baltimore skyline view can be had from the east end of North Avenue in the Baltimore Cemetery. I psychedelicized (see footnote) the photo above to show a contrast between the three layers of Baltimore - gravestones, neighborhoods and downtown. I'll spare you the deep profound metaphorical significance to that, except to point out that the American Brewery to the right side of the picture is a bridge between the middle neighborhood and background downtown layers.

Someone who actually knows something about photography can no doubt improve upon what I've done here.

Footnote: My spellcheck doesn't recognize the word "psychedelicized" but anyone familiar with the Chambers Brothers' "Time Has Come Today" knows it is a genuine word, or at least it was in the mid-1960s. 23 Skidoo and Tyler too.

Outer Pigtown

PIGTOWN: PIGS ON THE WING

Baltimore's revitalization has been fueled almost completely by the automobile. That's good news, because if we had been waiting around for a decent transit system to arrive, we would still be waiting.

Bolton Hill was the role model. Bolton Hillions totally kicked the MTA out of their neighborhood several decades ago. More recently, it has not been surprising that the outer inner city revitalization of Canton has relied almost completely on cars.

More surprising has been the recent residential boom in Mount Vernon, which has been accomplished with pretty much the same old auto-dominated traffic patterns and the same old transit system. Mount Vernon has attracted a new breed of residents who appear to be able to live with all that while still enjoying the neighborhood's other attributes.

The biggest victim of the auto status quo has been downtown, where the same old transit system has created a glass ceiling for vehicular access. In cities such as New York and Chicago, downtown office development has been able to proceed pretty much to infinity because a good transit system feeds on itself. As transit gets more popular, the impetus increases to make it even better. But in downtown Baltimore, on the other hand, office development has become virtually stagnant, consisting mainly of image-sensitive firms moving to larger and fancier digs but without a net employment increase - only more floor space and more parking space.

Despite this, downtown has followed Mount Vernon's lead in attracting new residential growth. Downtown residents largely seem to be able to get by without decent transit. Many can walk to work or they "reverse commute", taking advantage of the fact that the highways into downtown have reached the bottleneck saturation point in only one direction.

This begs the question: What areas of Baltimore are best poised to take greatest advantage of our seemingly futile inability to create a first-rate urban transit system? What areas are best able to deliver all the expected urban amenities, along with good automobile access, but without decent transit?

My first answer is Outer Pigtown - that area of Southwest Baltimore generally bounded by Washington Boulevard to the north, Monroe Street to the west, Russell Street to the south and Ostend Street to the east.


Outer Pigtown has just enough great architecture, charm and urban grit to pull this off, all wrapped up in a very non-threatening automobile-accessible package close to Interstate 95, 395 and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.

The two photos above are of Gaslight Square, one of the pioneers of Outer Pigtown, built around a combination of Victorian and newer buildings and postmodern industrial chic attitude. That big garish sign that hovers over the parking lot is functionally no different from signs on the most banal suburban strips, but it is evidently considered sufficiently tasteful for this particular urban context.

Buildings in Outer Pigtown tend to be big, and are surrounded by big parking lots, big open yards and expendable infill buildings and shacks. This will no doubt encourage big-time developers to come in and do their thing, such as Trammel Crow which is the developer for Gaslight Square.


A little bit of great architecture goes a long way, which is also fortunate because if bad architecture was as serious a problem as architectural critics seem to believe, cities like Baltimore would have given up years ago. Outer Pigtown has just enough great buildings to create a memorable theme and identity.

Pigtown also has a name. Misguided people have tried to call it Washington Village and have tried to divorce it from Outer Pigtown by giving the latter such names as Camden Industrial Park and Carroll Industrial Park and Carroll-Camden Industrial Park.


Such names completely miss the point of the role of old urban industrial areas in the post-industrial era. First of all, the term "industrial park" is far too generic for any area with as much history and legacy as Outer Pigtown. The term "industrial park" implies a sterile homogeneous area set aside for industry, safely separated from where people live, because industry is just considered too dirty and unsafe to be anywhere near neighborhoods.

But industry in the postmodern era is not any dirtier than the rest of the city, and in fact may be cleaner because unsupervised humans tend to befoul their environment more than highly regulated image-conscious industry does. And safety? What's so safe about all those residential areas in a City known for its murder rate.

Moreover, who is to say what constitutes industry anymore? Anyone who wants to be in a big sprawling building is a potential market for a place like Outer Pigtown.

Nowadays, industry is more of an icon than anything else. The postmodern world is fueled by icons. Ever since the mid-70s when Pink Floyd put a big imposing "iconic" industrial building on the cover of their "Animals" album and put a flying pig on top of it, industry has meant much more. Pink Floyd had been a pioneer of industrial music with the song "Welcome to the Machine" on the album before, built on a synthesized beat of gurgling factory sounds of the type that would later become more popularized by bands like Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails.

So while residential Pigtown is named after agricultural pigs squealing down the streets on their way to being slaughtered, industrial Pigtown conjures up flying pigs, surrealistic images created by the alchemical stew of postmodern industry.

Hidden away in an industrial building in nearby Morrell Park, there is a place called Orion Sound Studio which is a world-class incubator for progressive rock music - creating the Pink Floyds of the 21st century. That is the kind of activity that is attracted to postmodern urban industrial space. It is activity that is part of the natural organic evolution that makes cities interesting.

But there is a competing vision for Outer Pigtown that emerges from time to time. Several years ago, there a proposal was made to wipe out virtually all of Outer Pigtown to build a new horse racing track to replace Pimlico. This has got to be one of the most spectacularly stupid and destructive proposals ever for any place in the City of Baltimore. It is one of those ideas that is so incredibly stupid that most people have not taken it seriously, and its proponents have spoken of it only sporadically. This lack of exchange has allowed the idea to fester quietly rather than to be shot down with the certain finality that it deserves.

Flying pigs do not rely on mass transit, but they do rely on the overall health of the surrounding areas. This is where Outer Pigtown should shine. The revitalization of residential Inner Pigtown is well in progress. The Middle Branch waterfront across Russell Street from Outer Pigtown should succeed as well, especially if they can get rid of that crazy Greyhound Bus Terminal that sits there incongruously.

Then there is the grandiose vision for the Middle Branch waterfront of Westport, just to the south. Westport will need a massive infusion of investment in both buildings and infrastructure to fulfill its high density vision. Unlike Outer Pigtown, it must also rely on the fact that it sits at the very best situated light rail transit station along the entire system.

Westport is a great vision, which should ultimately propel it forward, but Outer Pigtown should be able to benefit from this vision far more quickly. Outer Pigtown will be the lower density support area for both Westport and Pigtown, where developers and entrepreneurs can come in and invest on their own achievable terms, getting in on the ground floor of a market that has virtually no limits.


Eventually, that environment for development should even touch the massive headquarters of the Maryland Transit Administration, whose bus maintenance facility is located in the largest, best located and most historic collection of buildings in all of Outer Pigtown. The pictures above and below show the MTA complex from Carroll Park. This is the perfect location for almost anything except a bus maintenance facility.

So the future of Outer Pigtown is bright indeed, and we don't even need a great transit system to achieve it. We just need to keep the horses away from the pigs.