Red Line Designer Says “Narrow Minded” Plan is Destined to Fail
In a response to one of our posts, a Red Line supporter questioned how a BRLU correspondent was qualified to question the wisdom of the MTA’s Professional Planners and Engineers.
It seems our correspondants know what they are talking about, engineering degrees or no. We know this because their observations are supported by a blog post from Gerald Neily a former Transportation Planner for the Baltimore City, who participated in the planning of the Red Line, which, “follows a long tradition of inefficiency and well-known problems,” reads the blog.
You can read all of the reasons that a credentialed former planner with intimate knowledge of the project thinks the Red Line is a bad idea on Baltimore’s Indypendant Reader.
You can read more about the Red Line from Gerald Neily at Baltimore Brew.
Let me sum up your positon in a nutshell:
“Waaah, we’re a bunch scared NIMBY’s who don’t like change, and we’re scared that if they build the Red Line all of the colored people and Mexicans will invade our neighborhood.”
You live in a city. If you don’t want mass transit, then go move to Columbia.
So…Mr Neily retired from the City in the mid-90s. And Red Line planning didn’t begin til 2003. So….when exactly did he work on the project? A little fact-checking is in order.
Gerry was involved in the project, but not as a planner, IIRC. He did work as one of the “facilitators” or whatever they were called for the working groups during the public meetings around 2005 that the MTA brought in.
I was also there, and I certainly participated. So I guess we all sort of “planned” together. Though it’s clear that my planning efforts at those meetings fell on deaf ears–with the possible exception of the missing CLR transfer at Howard St the Flanagan MTA didn’t include that only appeared after the Porcari MTA. (Don Fry had been claiming the Red Line would connect with the Light Rail, and it was quite obvious it didn’t at all.)
Steve – I guess you read nothing else posted on this blog. Everyone wants mass transit. We would ride it. Many of us are “colored” or Hispanic. We don’t believe in frivolous spending for a system that will be crippled at best and will gridlock both east and west sides of the city.