The Sun's recent editorial in favor of the Red Line states that "[a]ccording to one study, stations along the 14-mile Red Line route are within a half-mile of 184,000 jobs. By 2030, 210,000 jobs or 73 percent of the city's employment base will fall within that geographic pattern" ("Don't kill the 'Jobs Line,'" Jan. 4).
The implication is that the Red Line will bring all these workers to and from their jobs — a claim which has never been made even by the Maryland Transit Administration. Is the Red Line destined to supplant all other forms of public and private transportation from the east to the west of Baltimore? Even as proposed, the Red Line does not have anywhere near the capacity to do that.
This editorial's language appears almost identical to the bald assertion — made without any documentation — in 2013 by Donald Fry, executive director of the Greater Baltimore Committee. He wrote then that the "Red Line will provide convenient rail transit access to more than … 184,000 jobs currently within that radius. ... More than 210,000 jobs are forecast to be within station areas by 2030 – approximately 73 percent of all forecast jobs in the city."
Is this GBC propaganda the "study" that The Sun editors are asking us to rely on?
Art Cohen, Baltimore