BALTIMORE, Md. — State transportation officials laid out the first steps yesterday for an ambitious 109-mile Baltimore rail system that would connect the suburbs to downtown like spokes on a wheel, the Baltimore Sun reported.
Transportation Secretary John D. Porcari said the state will seek federal money next year to begin planning a new rail line from Woodlawn to Fells Point and the extension of a line in Northeast Baltimore.
Those two lines, totaling 14.6 miles, would cost about $2.1 billion and could be running by the end of the decade under the most aggressive scenario.
They were identified yesterday as priorities in an overall $12 billion plan for rail service that officials hope will one day rival Washington’s vaunted Metro system.
“A long-term relief valve for traffic congestion and air pollution hopefully awaits us all,” said former Del. Anne S. Perkins, a co-chairwoman of the committee that drew up the Baltimore regional rail plan.
The plan still needs approval from Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. after he is sworn in as governor next year. Ehrlich’s aides said yesterday that he does not have enough details about the cost and effects of the plan to sign off on it.
Yesterday’s report, delivered to Porcari, described the complete rail plan, which would expand transit rail service from 43 miles to 109 miles and the number of stations from 54 to 122.
The system would stretch from the suburbs to downtown, converging on three transfer stations at Charles Center, Camden Yards and Penn Station.
It would link light rail, subway and Maryland Rail Commuter service lines, creating a total of six lines.
Officials expect the whole system will take from 20 to 40 years to build.
About 50,000 people ride Baltimore’s subway daily, and 30,000 others ride the light rail. That is a far cry, however, from the 643,000 who ride the Washington Metro every day. Maryland officials have set a goal of doubling transit ridership by 2020, and they are counting on the Baltimore rail plan to help them reach that goal.
The system would include new stations in Baltimore City and Baltimore, Howard and Anne Arundel counties.
It would serve points including Arundel Mills Mall, Columbia Town Center, White Marsh Town Center, airports, universities, and business and cultural districts.
“It’s a new transit plan for a new century,” Porcari said yesterday. The state has set aside $4 million for an environmental impact study to begin in January, he said.
Porcari set these two lines as priorities:
Red Line construction: This 10.5-mile segment of the line would run from the Social Security Administration in the west through downtown to Fells Point.
Plans call for the line to split there and continue to Canton and Turners Station in Dundalk, but those spurs are not included as a priority.
Green Line extension: This would build on the Metro subway, which runs from Owings Mills to the Johns Hopkins Medical Campus. The 4.1-mile extension would continue from Hopkins to Morgan State University.
Plans call for the line to later extend to White Marsh and Middle River.
“If we’re going to have a strong and vibrant city, then a quality transportation system is absolutely essential,” said Morgan State President Earl S. Richardson, a member of the rail plan committee.
Richardson said he’s thinking about potential sites for the Morgan State rail stop.
“It’s a very exciting future,” he said, envisioning people coming to his campus from all over the region for cultural and sporting events.
Porcari said that if federal funding is secured, construction could begin on the Red and Green lines by 2005, with completion by 2010.
The state’s plan will be competing with dozens of transit plans from across the country to be included in next year’s transportation reauthorization bill in Congress.
The bill, which comes up every five years, sets the transportation projects that are eligible for federal funding.
The federal government would be expected to pay for at least half of the Baltimore rail system.
The rest would have to come from the state.
Aides to Ehrlich said that his top transportation priority is building the proposed $1 billion Inter-County Connector highway in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, and they were reluctant to commit to anything beyond that.
“He believes in the value of mass transit,” said Ehrlich spokesman Paul Shurick. “But the decision he’s going to have to make is based on the economics of the project.
“The considerations are the impact on vehicular traffic, on neighborhoods, on the environment, the cost, the expediency.”