Baltimore - Making It Into The 20th. Century

Date: Thu, 6 Nov 1997
From: Shawn Tavon Sims <sts64896@mcs.umes.umd.edu>
To: Webmaster

    I'm glad that Baltimore is going through a major development phase, but given Baltimore's size, and it is NOT as small as it seems, what good is development in places like the Southeast, Southwest, and the Southern districts without some rapid access to these places. That is, an expanded subway and light rail system. We got 4 other cities in the Northeast who are already ahead of us in that stage, and in the words of R.B. Jones of the Baltimore Times, we are trying our best to "make it into the 20th century while other cities are making it into the 21st."

    I sent major suggestions to the MTA and they came back with a map of the light rail and some packets of the subway and how they are expanding the light rail. What I should have done was showed THEM rail maps of Philadelphia (Subway and Regional) and of Washington DC (5 lines plus the VA Railroad) and showed the state how slow-minded they truly are. Baltimore needs to be competitive, and to do that our leaders must learn to be leaders and not cronyist yesmen for the rich. It also needs to start catering to what its RESIDENTS, not its TOURISTS, want to see in a city like Baltimore.

    In the minds of many of its residents and its tourists, Baltimore has what is called a "countrified, slow-minded mind-state, filled with southern-minded hicks who think they know what is good for the city, when in all they worry more about their property values (not to mention their view of a body of water and some rusty docks) then the greater good of Baltimore itself".

    For this one example only, take a look at our subway. It's only going NW and just east of Downtown. It practically look like deformed body limbs when you look at the Metro Map. One line stretching out to Owings Mills, the other line looking like it's cast in a sling as it approaches Johns Hopkins. Look at the street lights : Two turn green in sucession, the 3rd one turns red. Mad traffic jams in the making. Even the hanging light posts, such as the one at North and Bentalou, are getting outdated and generic as the wires dangle dangerously close to bypassing delivery trucks and tractor-trailers.

    Last but not least, the Light Rail. Always a bad design, always an accident with a passing car, always a form of "el cheapo" cost cutting, and look what happens : 30 to 47 minute delays because they (the state)wanted the trains to share one track for 13 miles. Now it's hard to redirect the trains as they come out of the Penn Station and BWI spurs. Common sense should have told Schaefer, Glendening, and the MTA to spend money to ELEVATE some parts of the line. The whole thing was a bad idea to begin with .

    We can do a lot better than this, Charm City, we MUST !! And I got many suggestions since I am too far from the PlanBaltimore meetings taking place citywide. E-mail me to get them. It may be for the good of the city and how we are collectively perceived .