To paraphrase the late architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, it is a poor society indeed that has no money for anything except expressways to rush people out of our cities ("Don't kill the 'Jobs Line,'" Jan. 4).
Baltimore has suffered for far too long from a tendency to disproportionately pour money into freeways and sprawl while failing to adequately invest in public transportation.
The lack of access to quality transit — the lifeblood of any great city — has made too many of our neighborhoods stagnate and cut off too many residents from economic opportunity. It contributes to unmanageable traffic congestion and makes the Baltimore region less competitive in an era when more people are looking to live and invest in walkable communities with quality transit.
With the Red Line, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build out a comprehensive rail transit system. We have the opportunity to create thousands of jobs for city residents during the project's construction period, and to connect with hundreds of thousands more once the system is in operation.
Yes, there are critics nitpicking the Red Line from any angle they can find. That's easy to do with any large infrastructure project. But the critics too readily dismiss 15 years of expert engineering and planning that have gone into making the Red Line one of the most innovative and cost-effective transit projects in the nation, and it is now close to qualifying for nearly a billion dollars in highly competitive federal funding.
This opportunity will not come again. If we delay or rework the Red Line plans at this late hour, the federal dollars will be lost to other states and Baltimore's public transit will continue to fall behind as other cities build out their systems. Failing to build the Red Line will have enormous long-term costs for our region's livability and economic vitality.
The fight for the Red Line is a fight for the future of Baltimore. That's why I am asking our legislators, along with Gov.-elect Larry Hogan, to have the vision and the courage to build the Red Line and finally usher in a 21st-century transit system worthy of the residents of our great city.
Grant Corley