Larry Hogan has indicated that when he takes office the Red Line and Purple Line rail projects will likely get the ax. At a speech in Bethesda this month he said the state's priorities are out of whack.
Less than 10 percent of the people use mass transit, he said, but most people in the state want the roads to be fixed.
If Mr. Hogan had simply said "we can't afford those projects now, I want to balance the budget first," I would have been frustrated, but at least I could have understood his argument.
If he had said "the current Red Line plan isn't optimal, and I don't want to roll out a less than perfect plan," I might even have agreed with him.
But Mr. Hogan implies that we already have a fully fledged and operational system that people simply don't use. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Our rail network is a hodgepodge of MARC, Light Rail and Metro systems that, despite being decades old, are still stuck in their infancy. Since each system's inception it has almost totally ceased to grow.
The most extensive rail growth on MTA rail in the last 15 years was simply double tracking the existing Light Rail, something that was silly to not have been done in the first place.
Ten percent ridership? You can't take a train to Frederick or Annapolis from Baltimore. You can't transfer between some intersecting lines.
Priorities out of whack? How about the fact that MARC exists to serve D.C. instead of Baltimore or Annapolis?
More and more people are moving to Maryland despite repeated claims by political commentators that folks are leaving. According to the U.S. Census, the state's population increased by some 155,000 people between 2010 and 2013. More people are moving to D.C. too, which whether you like it or not affects us as well.
The question should be "how can we get more people off the roads?" not how can we fit more people onto them.
There's only so much you can reasonably do to widen highways, and there's only so many new highways you can build. With more and more people coming to Maryland, mass transportation needs to help carry the load.
If Governor-elect Hogan axes the rail projects because he wants to build roads instead, he will be continuing Maryland's tradition of getting it completely wrong on transportation issues.
L.E. Miller