> land value tax is stupid and never going to happen.

Wanna actually justify this instead of just saying its stupid? As it is people are penalized for actually developing in the city, while their neighbor can be a vacant derelict lot in downtown paying nothing in taxes. This creates tons of perverse incentives all over, including the usage of vacants as credit lines where the mortgages can be refinanced at the initial appraisal while the property taxes drop year over year as the property falls into disrepair. LVT both punishes underutilization of valuable land and incentivzes development to create new, desirable areas. As long as its paired with vacancy penalties to avoid overdevelopment, it could possibly single-handedly fix the vacants nightmare.

The city would have plenty of money if it:

1. abolished and reformed the PD, preferably into separate, smaller departments. Its so corrupt its unsalvagable as it is. Give neighborhoods their own local PDs with officers that have to actually give a shit about their neighborhood.
2. with non-shit law enforcement enforce traffic law. Like, that alone will be like a hundred million bucks. People ignore red lights, speed limits, hazard lights in the middle of the road, ignore pedestrian right of way, etc.
3. yeet the property tax and replace it with a land value tax, and have an underutilization penalty on parking lots and vacants. This long term isn't a huge revenue source, but having this kind of tax code will get vacants turned over to people to redevelop and see wasted parking space rebuilt into usable real estate. People being able and wanting to live here makes the city more money.
4. local gas tax. The gas in this city is grotesquely cheap compared to like any other city in the country. Gas stations get mad, but gas being more expensive in cities one disincentivzes driving in them and two disincentivizes gas stations being built in the city which eat up a lot of infrastructure. But in the meantime its, again, a ton of revenue cities like Philly, DC, and NY enjoy.

Also the state needs to legalize and tax drugs. This isn't directly for the city, but again, huge revenue stream the state is just ignoring. Put the money in the MTA and build the damn metro.

But there you go, saving hundreds of millions a year, plus hundreds of millions in new revenue, at least. We could totally build a few bike lanes with that or hell maybe even have the circulator run with 5 minute headways and expanded service. I'd love to see the circulator run from Pigtown / Fed Hill in the south west to Westide / around Druid Hill Park up to Hampden and over to Canton, just because having regular free busses will get a ton of people more mobile and have more cars off the road so cyclists don't have to fear for their lives.

red line or red line the government

Not having a jury trial doesn't mean you don't have a defense, it just means the judge decides.

Theoretically we would rather just have trustworthy judges, but in practice that doesn't happen often enough. Still, if expanded jury trials mean less prosecution of low level crime, thats going to be a net negative for society.

Corollary, but I really feel like some of the sidwalk design in some parts of the city intentionally put trees in the way to make the area pedestrian unfriendly. This is more that the sidewalks were never wide enough to begin with, but if the sidewalk isn't wide enough having trees makes it so you literally cannot have two people walk past each other, and that is insane in a supposed urban environment.

Honestly looks like this intersection could use conversion to a roundabout? I think it would fit. Getting people to yield for pedestrians around roundabouts can be hard, especially in "rules are for other people" MD drivers.

Gosh that's gorgeous, can we start putting in bike lanes when it happens though?

I know they have some at Calhoun and Lombard, where else is it bad? What we really need out here is some protected bike lanes that run to Cathedral St.