As a resident of Canton, I have been very much looking forward to having the Red Line here ("To appeal to Hogan, Red Line supporters zero in on business support," Jan. 16).
Our bus service to downtown Baltimore is very spotty, and I frequently wait more than 15 minutes for a bus; on occasion the wait can be up to 50 minutes.
In addition to convenient and reliable transport to Harbor East, Fells Point and the Inner Harbor, the Red Line would bring more tourists to those areas. A streetcar line circling the harbor would be a boon to the area.
Republican Gov.-elect Larry Hogan has expressed opposition to mass transit solutions, such as the Red Line in Baltimore and the Purple Line in the Washington suburbs, in favor of more highways. He appears to share the views of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who killed a desperately needed new Hudson River tunnel for Amtrak and commuter rail.
One has only to go to Asia or Europe to see how far behind the U.S. is in mass transit. In most urban areas there car ownership is totally unnecessary.
Metro, street car, light rail and bus solutions provide convenient, reliable transport every 10 minutes and in some cases even every five minutes. Moreover, now that we have car-hire services such as Lyft, Uber and Zip Car, even more people would be willing to forego the headaches of car ownership.
We could have been entirely energy independent years ago if we had followed through with more and better mass transit after the Arab Oil Embargo of the 1970s.
Concerns that federal support is insufficient or might fail to win approval from the new Republican majorities in Congress are wildly speculative. Besides, if Republicans continue down their current path of angrily opposing every solution requiring government action — and possibly even shutting down the government again — those GOP majorities may no longer exist two years from now.
More, wider highways are not the solution; mass transit is. Convenient service to Canton, Fells Point and Harbor East, which continue to show enormous growth in housing units, would be a huge boon to those areas.
We should not let the new governor and his GOP allies turn back the clock to transportation policies that didn't work then and won't work now.
Jake Spencer, Baltimore