- With us now in the studio is Kevin Quinn,
the MTA's director of planning.
Kevin, thanks for being with us.
- Hey, thanks for having me.
- Wholesale changes coming to
the bus map in Baltimore.
- Yeah. - Why?
- Really big.
So, you know, our bus network needs to be
a lot more reliable for our riders.
We need to provide a better service.
And BaltimoreLink is our effort to completely
transform transit in the Baltimore region.
We wanna provide a better service,
we wanna connect better to the modes,
the Light Rail, the Metro, commuter bus, MARC train,
you know, all the ways to get around.
Our region has really changed dramatically
over the last 50 or 60 years
and we need a transit system that reflects that.
- How, how did the current transit system evolve?
Was it just that? - Yeah.
- Over time, different routes were added, and--
- Yeah.
- And without a whole lot of, like, 30,000 foot planning.
- Yeah, so, you know, it really evolved decades ago
with the trolley lines, right?
The start of the trolley lines.
And then since then we've put in a
Metro line and a Light Rail
and we now run MARC trains all the way
from Perryville down to D.C.
And not once has someone stopped to say,
"We should really take a moment
"and realign our bus system with
"all theses great modes of transit that we have."
We've never taken that opportunity
and this is the opportunity that we have to do that.
- Well some of that was done, I guess.
I mean, out here in the 'burbs in Owings Mills,
and really at any of the Metro stops,
you see all sorts of bus activity.
- Sure, but, no one ever, you know, we have
at a lot of the rail stations,
we have some rail stations that have too much bus service,
we have other rail stations
that have too little bus service.
And so, you know, the way that our region has changed,
think about places like White Marsh,
or Towson, or Owings Mills.
And think about the places that maybe
don't have the rail service.
So, for example, just last June,
we launched new Express BusLink services.
And so these connect some great suburban areas for us.
So, for example, under our previous bus system,
to go from, you know, White Marsh down, to,
out to Towson, you had to go White Marsh
all the way to downtown, transfer on a bus,
come over, come all the way back north to Towson.
Makes absolutely no sense at all.
So, last June, we rolled out a new line
going from Towson to White Marsh.
Gets you there in 45 minutes, what used to take 2 hours.
- We have a map. Let's put the map back up for a second.
- And it's kinda the big view,
well that's the closer view of
downtown Baltimore, and everything's color-coded.
I mean, it sorta looks like a, you know,
hub and spoke kinda thing with a--
- [Kevin] Yeah.
- [Reporter] How radical is this?
- Yeah, it's pretty radical.
So, yeah, let me talk a little bit about the framework
of the BaltimoreLink system.
So, the backbone of the system
are 12 high-frequency routes.
What we call CityLink routes.
When I say high-frequency, that means they're coming
every ten minutes during peak hours
and every 15 minutes during midday.
So we lay down this new backbone of 12 lines
that are coming really high-frequency,
pulsing in and out of the downtown.
And one really cool thing that we've done
is that each of these CityLink lines are connected
with one another as well as the Light Rail and the Metro.
So they all touch each other.
So if you live on one of these lines, Light Rail or Metro,
you can transfer, you can get to anywhere else
on one of these other lines with just one transfer.
- Let me remind our reviewers, if you have a question
about the, the big changes coming to
Baltimore's bus network, give us a call,
we'll have the number on the screen.
Or tweet your questions.
Use the twitter address @mptnews.
So none of this has happened yet.
- That's exactly right.
- It all happens on one day-- - Yeah.
- In June?
- Yes. Overnight.
So, June 17th, Saturday June 17th into June 18th,
overnight, the bus lines will change.
And so, we've been really engaged with our riders,
we gotta get the word out.
Folks are gonna see new route numbers,
new routes themselves, you know,
where they're going differently.
Another really cool piece of this project
is a rollout of 5,000 brand new bus stop signs
that will be unveiled overnight.
So, you know, our current bus stop sign,
it's just blue, it's got a white number on it,
doesn't tell you anything else.
Doesn't tell you where it goes,
doesn't even say the MTA.
Our new bus stop signs are, you know,
state of the art, they have where they're going,
how frequently they're running.
You know, we have folks, a lot of times,
waiting at bus stops in the middle of the day
for routes that are running only during peak hours.
We don't want that, we don't want that.
We want our riders to have good information
and so those 5,000 bus stop signs
will be unveiled overnight.
- There must be some people out there
who have a bus they take now
who, who maybe live in a certain spot
because that bus connects to where they work
and that line's gonna go away.
I mean, how do you think about those people.
- Well I think, you know, with these high-frequency lines,
one thing that we're hoping to do is
really put in place a better, more reliable system.
So, you know, one of the reasons that we're
really changing this has to do with sort of just the,
the structure of the network as it is today.
For example, we put way to many routes downtown.
Baltimore and Fayette Streets, for example.
Baltimore Street has over 800 buses a day.
It's just far too many.
Pratte Street has only 300.
We need to even that out.
And so, by making changes of, say,
spreading bus routes out on downtown streets,
we're gonna improve reliability throughout
the entire system that's gonna help people to
get places better and faster.
- What's the feedback you've been getting?
I know when this was first proposed,
which was over a year now, - Yeah.
- The then mayor of Baltimore was not initially a fan.
What's the relationship with city government at this point?
- Yeah, that's a great question.
We've had a really great working relationship
with our Baltimore City Department of Transportation.
We, we did, we went out for an initial round of feedback,
a first round of public feedback
and got around a thousand comments.
We've done a couple of additional rounds of feedback
and to-date we've received around
4,500 comments on our plan.
It's gone pretty well and I think that what's happened,
there's been this evolution
of people understanding the system better.
You know, people saw it at first and said,
"Woah, this is mindblowing," you know,
and so we've moderated a bit.
And so, I think, I think people are a lot happier with it.
You know, speaking of Baltimore City DOT,
couple really cool things that I gotta
talk about that we're doing.
One are five and a half miles of new,
dedicated bus lanes downtown.
So their down on Pratte and Lombard Street right now,
you may have seen 'em, bright red lanes.
And those are also gonna be down on--
- It's more like rust color, right?
- It is. It's terra cotta.
Exactly. Yeah. - It is, really?
So, you know, but we're trying to get up--
- But it means I can't drive in that lane.
- That's right.
- Unless I'm making a right turn.
- That's exactly right.
- Okay. - It kind of,
has some cuts in it
so that then you can make a right-hand turn.
So, you know, we're looking at new, dedicated bus lanes
on Baltimore and Fayette Streets,
on Charles and St. Paul, on kinda the Gil,
Gay and Hillen Street corridors.
It's all in an effort to get our buses through
the most congested area of our region.
- Let's grab a phone call.
Baltimore County, this is Pam.
Pam, thanks for calling, go ahead.
- [Pam] Thank you, I was calling
because I saw that on the map there were colors
and being in Baltimore County,
on Western Baltimore County,
I wanted to ask about the red line,
because I know that it had been discontinued.
Is it going to be resumed?
- Thank you very much.
So the decision to not build the crosstown light rail,
the red line, proceeded this decision,
but this doesn't have a whole lot
to do with that, does it?
- It doesn't.
You know, so, there was a decision made
not to move forward with this project,
or with the red line.
You know, this project is really 100% focused
on making our bus system better.
And there have been folks that have recognized for decades
that our bus system needs to be re-looked at.
- What do you expect to happen in terms of the
number of riders, or number of rides per day?
- Yeah. - Well, you hope it'll go up.
- Well, you know, I think our hope is that by
putting out a better product, you know,
we may see ridership increases, you know,
our focus right now is providing a good, reliable service.
We wanna provide a good, reliable product
that people can count on day in and day out to get to work.
That's the focus right now.
- Michael in Anne Arundel County,
Michael thank you for the call, go ahead.
- [Michael] I'm calling to find out
what could be done to improve transportation
from outlying areas, such as Arnold, Severna Park,
Annapolis, to Johns Hopkins.
- Thank you very much.
So, to get from those areas, what would you do?
- Sure. So, you know,
a big part of BaltimoreLink,
while a big focus is on Baltimore's bus system,
regional connectivity is something else
we focused a lot on and so back on--
You know, we've built,
historically, just to interrupt for a second--
- [Kevin] Yeah.
- We've built a lot of things that don't connect.
Like the light rail and the Metro rail don't connect.
And the red line wouldn't have connected to anything.
- Yeah. Well the Metro and the light rail do connect,
they're just one block away from each other.
So, in a couple places, they come pretty close.
- It's not horse shoes, but go on.
- It's not horse shoes, yeah I understand.
The, speaking of Annapolis,
so back in March, we did rollout a new commuter bus line
that runs from Baltimore to Annapolis
and Annapolis to Baltimore.
We just started that up.
It's a fantastic new service.
It actually starts over on Kent Island,
on the Eastern Shore,
picks up folks in Annapolis, comes to Baltimore,
and then again we have one going Baltimore-Annapolis.
We also started a new commuter bus line
getting Baltimore City residents
up to Aberdeen Proving Ground.
So, that's a great new connection for Baltimore City
residents working up at the base.
We also did some enhancements to our
commuter bus between Columbia and Baltimore,
where we have a great, popular service
and we added some trips there as well.
So, you know, I guess I'd advise the caller to
check out our website, mta.maryland.gov,
and see if that's a commuter bus
that would would work from them
that would get them to Johns Hopkins Hospital.
- Right, but it can be done and the idea is that
you'd be able to get to the Baltimore Metro line
if nothing else which goes right over to Hopkins.
- That's exactly right.
- Baltimore County, this is Ralph.
Ralph, thank you for the call, go ahead.
- [Ralph] Hi, my question is
what will happen to the, what's gonna happen with the
specialty lines that serve areas that are
used a lot by low-income workers,
say to Stella Maris north of the city,
and say the Under Armour factory in Curtis Bay,
the Amazon distribution center on Broening Highway,
those kind of things, sometimes they're the only way
low-income workers can get to those jobs
if they don't have a car.
- Ralph, great question, thank you sir.
- Yeah, sure, so, you know,
I'd focused a lot on those
twelve color-coded CityLink lines.
But we have a total of 65 lines in our system, you know,
those twelve lines form the backbone of the system,
but we supplement them with plenty of geographic coverage
to a lot of places that the caller just noted:
Amazon, Under Armour's facility, Stella Maris.
All of these are places that we will still go
under our new system.
- What was the process?
Like , I mean, you considered where Amazon is
when you were looking at Broening Highway, right?
- Yeah, we, so we use a good bit of data.
We use origin-destination data,
so we use what are called, you know, OD surveys,
in addition to just employment data.
You know, we met with a lot of employers and got data
on zip codes, where employees live.
You know, where they're coming from,
where they're trying to get to.
And then we took that information and really tried to
build the routes around where people wanted to go.
And again, this is about, you know,
reimagining a bus network that
hasn't been looked at in 50 or 60 years
and taking that data, giving it a good refresh,
giving it a good look, and completely reimagining it.
Anne Arundel County, this is George.
George, thank you for the call, go ahead.
- [George] Thank you, I have a couple questions.
One would be, approximately
what percentage of their passengers
do you think that this will impact,
presumably to the good,
and I'd also wonder whether the overall program
provides any operational efficiencies
or whether it will increase your cost,
and if so, how is it being funded.
- Very good. - [George] Appreciate it.
- George, thank you for the call.
- So, yeah.
- And I'm guessing it's gonna impact 100% of your riders.
- It will impact 100% of our riders, yeah.
I mean, all lines change, if not in alignment,
than in number and frequency, so, you know,
a route that comes every 40 minutes
could be coming every 30 minutes now.
The CityLink lines will be much more high-frequency
than some of the lines that are out there today.
- Overall budget for runnin' the buses, you know,
next year versus last year?
- Sure, so you know, this is funded with $135 million
from Governor Hogan that, you know,
put into this, as investment into this great project,
that's spread between some operating and some capital.
The operating over six years,
so it adds some additional money
in each of our years to the budget.
And then the capital pieces go towards great things like
dedicated bus lanes, transit signal priority,
transfer facilities.
We're even partnering with Baltimore City on their
bike-share program to have bike-share docks
near our Light Rail and Metro stations.
- So I'm guessing the day after this goes into affect,
there's gonna be a lot of stories in the news from
people who've been dislocated one way or another.
And there's gonna be sort of a negative news cycle
for some period of time.
What made the situation such that you needed to do,
kind of radical surgery, and do it all at once?
- Yeah, I think, I think if you were going
out to a lot of the community meetings
and having conversations with our riders,
you talk to them and hear about how
we need to provide a more reliable service.
And so as we took a look at it, you know,
a transit system is much, it's like a human body, you know?
You've, you can't just fix an arm.
You can't just fix a single limb.
It's all connected.
And so when we looked at it,
we said there have to be some systemic, wholesale changes
that happen to this system to make it more reliable.
- Cheryl in Baltimore City.
Cheryl, thank you for calling, go ahead.
- [Cheryl] Hi, my question
is particularly for Baltimore City.
Are there going to be more benches that are sheltered in,
on bus stops as well as trash cans?
So that people aren't exposed to the elements?
- Great question, thank you very much.
- Yeah, sure, it's a fantastic question.
So, a big part of BaltimoreLink
is our transfer facilities that we're building.
The big one that we're building
is out of the West Baltimore MARC station,
which is kind of our crown-jewel of the system
where we're gonna have
additional benches and shelters.
Throughout this system, we're gonna have
200 bus shelters that go out, throughout the system.
We have 400 shelters today.
That'll increase to 600.
I'd also urge any community associations to
check out our website, and we can give some contact info
for our Adopt-A-Stop program,
which has been really successful
and it's a great way for local businesses
and local communities to adopt a bus stop or a bus shelter
and help us keep it clean.
We wanna have a clean system for everybody.
- They get some signage in return for that?
- Yeah, that's exactly right. - Very good.
Carroll County, this is Laura.
Laura, thank you for the call, go ahead.
Whoops, let's try that again.
Laura, you're on, go ahead. - [Laura] Hello?
Yes, great hi, thank you.
There are so many of us in Carroll County
who commute into the city.
Scores and scores.
I feel we're fairly ignored where bus funds
and things like that are concerned.
Is there any chance of this improving in the future?
- Thanks very much.
- We don't have any plans in the future to,
to be extending bus lines out to Carroll County.
I don't have a great answer for that one.
- Alright.
So let's talk about, in the last half minute we have,
how people can get more information on,
on a local basis, where this is gonna run.
- Yeah, so, best place for information right now
is baltimorelink.com.
We have so many resources for people.
We have a comparative trip-planner,
where people can put in where they're coming from,
where they're going,
and it gives them a comparison between
what they'd take today and what they'd take in the future.
We also have a forum there,
where community associations can contact us
to either get more information,
or we're happy to come out and give a community presentation
about how routes impact them on the local level.
- Very good. Kevin Quinn with the MTA, busy man.
Thanks for stoppin' by. - Thank you.
- Appreciate it.
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