Building the Red Line is a poor use of taxpayer funds
Despite high construction costs and limited ridership prospects, the Maryland Transportation Administration (MTA) is plowing ahead with the Red Line which would connect Woodlawn and Bayview via central Baltimore. At a time of renewed state budgetary pressure, building the Red Line appears to be an unwise use of taxpayer funds.
Under Gov. Martin O’Malley, the MTA won a federal commitment to provide $900 million in grant funding toward the project’s $3 billion estimated cost. But, in 2015, his successor Larry Hogan canceled the Red Line project, declining the federal grant. Hogan later defended that decision, telling a reporter “Everybody in that transportation department said that project made no sense whatsoever.”
During the O’Malley era, the new line was expected to transport 16.4 million passengers annually or 47,700 on a typical weekday. This high volume of passengers is more suitable to high-capacity trains, and so light rail appeared to be the most appropriate solution.
But rail systems are expensive to build and can often run many years behind schedule. Just ask residents of Honolulu, who expected their 20-mile Skyline to be completed in 2020 at a cost of $4.8 billion. Instead, a truncated system is now expected to be fully operational in 2031, at a cost of $9.9 billion. Closer to home, MTA’s Purple Line in the northern D.C. suburbs is also running above budget and behind schedule, with the service inception date recently postponed to 2027.
Compared to the expectations before the project was abandoned in 2015, a light rail Red Line constructed in the 2020s will be more expensive and will transport fewer riders. In short, it will make even less than the no sense it made when Hogan canceled it.
With respect to cost, MTA is offering three possible light rail alternatives with costs ranging from $3.2 billion to $7.2 billion depending on the precise route and whether the project will include a tunnel. While tunneling under Cooks Lane and through Central Baltimore reduces travel time, it also adds considerable costs and potential for delay. Given cost growth experienced by other projects since 2015, MTA’s estimated capital costs appear to be quite optimistic.
And construction costs are just the beginning of the Red Line’s budgetary impact. Light rail systems in the US inevitably operate at a loss. In fiscal year 2022, MTA paid $52.6 million to operate the north-south Baltimore Light RailLink, with less than 7% of that offset by fare revenue.
MTA has also offered three bus rapid-transit (BRT) alternatives covering the same routes as the three light rail options. Costs for these options range from $1.9 billion to $5.7 billion, reflecting projected savings of about $1.5 billion for any given route. BRT is also cheaper to operate.
BRT has a lower theoretical capacity than rail and could be insufficient if previously anticipated demand materializes. But given Baltimore’s declining population and the increased use of remote work and education in the wake of COVID-19, the previously expected ridership forecast is very unlikely to materialize.
Ridership trends on Baltimore’s existing light rail system show us why. After peaking at 8.8 million in fiscal year 2012, ridership on Light RailLink gradually declined during the rest of the 2010s before cratering during the COVID19 pandemic. A post-pandemic recovery still left ridership at around half of pre-COVID levels before it was attenuated by a system shutdown last December. Assuming no service disruptions in fiscal year 2025, ridership may return to something approaching 4 million per year, or about 15,000 per weekday.
If Gov. Wes Moore feels the need to redeem his campaign project and build the Red Line, he should choose the least expensive BRT alternative. This option will also have a shorter construction period and the lowest risk of overruns and delays because it avoids the complexities of tunneling and using light-rail rolling stock. It may also be the fastest way to learn that Hogan’s decision to scrap the project was the correct choice.