Eliminating fares is definitely a huge benefit to specifically bus systems because it makes stops way more efficient. But I get the antagonistic relationship between MDoT and Bmore means that the state will never just give the city free busses.

One idea I've been floating is that the city should give residents 3, 5, or 7 free day charm passes a month. I'd want them to just load them on the app but way too many people don't have phones or cell service (something else the city could do, municipal cell service and a phone recycling program to give people that need phones phones) but in the meantime they could just load them on the app for residents that have phones and anyone else can get the pass in the mail. Maybe give out 7 days paper and 8 on the app to try to promote its use a bit, but still give everyone at least a week of free transit.

DC is floating the same kind of policy with $100 a month allowance per city resident in Metro, and this would be a lot less per person, but I think it would still get more people using transit and might get more pressure to improve it if people in Fells and Fed Hill were on it more often.

The charm pass works fine, just flash the driver the little screen animation thing, my problem with it is the fare structure sucks in that if you take a bus somewhere and back you are just stuck doing a full day pass no matter what. The $2 passes should be for like 4 hours of transit so that most trips are included in that pass rather than the like 15 or 30 minutes it currently is.

The problem with 83 for busses isn't needing a dedicated lane, its the backups getting off the highway. Giving them a bus only lane on the highway doesn't do anything to fix that.

I am annoyed on the bus subject how much MD is trying to push electric busses when what we really need is that the colored line busses (and well, all the busses in general) having better than fucking 40 minute headways. I live on the purple line, they just cut the route from John Hopkins which really messed with me because it used to stop throughout downtown and at Shot Tower and now it skips half the city,

We need some express busses for arterials, particularly on rts 40 and 1. And we need way, way more frequent service on every line - 4-8 minute headways for colored lines, and 15 minute headways for numbered lines. People don't take the bus that could to get cars off the road because you can't get anywhere with a direct connection (and if you can, the bus stops 30 times and takes twice as long as driving anyway) and if you have to transfer you are stuck waiting somewhere for upwards of 20-30 minutes, and then half the time your transfer bus never even shows up.

I wish I could take the bus to doctors appointments, its like the perfect use case for busses, but I can't because I have to assume the bus will never show, get stuck in traffic, or that I'll miss the transfer. And even if it goes perfectly, most places I go regularly take 15-20 minutes by car and 40-120 minutes by bus. Make driving suck, and make taking transit not, and more people will take transit over driving, and then the city can build denser and waste less space on parking and roads for cars that drive people away.

Like, I am the person that hates driving and wants to use transit, but if I'm choosing between hopping in the car I park outside my townhouse with plenty of permit free street parking, have almost no traffic cuz the roads are so massive all the way out to some suburb sprawl mall with football fields worth of free parking in half the time it would take to bus anywhere, or possibly getting marooned somewhere with groceries when a bus just never shows or is 30 minutes out from when I'm done shopping, the system pushes you so hugely towards driving the planet killer.

Top it all off with most downtown jobs providing parking garages, so its not like you have to worry about parking for work, so of course you are going to drive there.

The only problem I have with cutting 83 further north, which would normally be a great idea and long term I'd def agree to cut it out to Northern Parkway, is that the light rail doesn't go direct to Penn Station from the north. Like if we want to cut the highways we need to actually offer an alternative that won't piss people off feeling like a huge downgrade.

That being said yea, they totally should put in an infill park and ride at Northern Parkway for the light rail. If you are coming down 83 from PA there are park and ride signs for the light rail in Timonium, but from the Beltway you really don't have a good spot to do it at.

Long term the goal for transit development in Baltimore should be to build out light and heavy rail to the major burbs at the city border (if the red line is built to Catonsville, then Parkville is the only really big one I see needing a dedicated right of way rail connection) and build up the city core with proper metro so commuters feel fine park and riding in from near the beltway. But that has to start and build out center-out, meaning we need things like the red line making inner city connections that are woefully needed, and replacing MLK and 83 with complete streets and working transit.

We don't need a road for defense, we can just let invading landers collapse crumbling bridges into the harbor where the toxic water will melt them through in seconds.

I wonder if at some point it might make sense to try to put in a big dig style underground connector. Like rip out 83 at and past Penn Station and have it go underground from there to meet 95 where 395 is. Then MLK, President, Pratt, Light, and Russel, and Howard could all be complete street'd into way less car volume.

I imagine it would have interchanges at Camden Yards, 40 / UMD, and State Center.

Like it would be stupidly expensive, but there is definitely a lot of through traffic that ends up on downtown city streets.

Honestly, a ring subway would probably be way better. Put in a heavy rail loop on a similar alignment with stations for like... South Bmore, Statiums, UMD, State Center, and Penn Station. And still rip out 83 past the station cuz its just dumb. They could build up park and ride infrastructure at 395 and the end of 83 and just let people metro around instead. If it has a transfer track at state center it can use existing train yards, so the only real expense (and yeah, it is pricy) is tunnel boring, station construction, and buying the trains. But MTA is already getting new trains anyway, so like... missed opportunity. People could use the light rail to go around downtown or the subway to bypass it. As it is, people don't use the light rail cuz its gets so freaking slow downtown.

Build transit so the current infrastructure is fine and stop building more and bigger highways.

My spouse and I bought on the border of Union Square in Mount Clare this summer for 185k for a 4 bedroom 3 bath 2013 rehab. I left my passenger door unlocked overnight and my car was still there this morning, so its probably not as bad as people think, and some neighbors had a block party in the lot across the street last night.

From what I've seen I think Pigtown is overhyped but Hollins Market and Union Square are legit hidden gems, at least along Lombard and Hollins. Things get worse on Baltimore and Pratt.

Fair warning, if you see a house thats too good to be true, it probably is. The stuff under 200k is usually structurally unsound or has something really wrong with it. You can get a lucky break, but tread lightly, especially in the bougie neighborhoods.

In the right areas with the super big townhouses you see a lot of 20' x 80' x 3 story (10' per floor) houses that have theoretical square footage of up to 6k sq ft including the basement. Obviously walls, framing, stairs etc are gonna take a chunk out of that, but these houses were built for intergenerational families 2 centuries ago, and are generally meant to hold up to like 10 people let alone four and two dogs.

That being said, MLK is an abomination that needs to be like, put underground or something? I have no idea. Compare President St to MLK and its obvious one was made to cut half the city off. It isn't just a matter of trying to reduce it, maybe build bridges over it?

Amtrak, by its government charter, is obligated to run those lines, even when the fees they pay the track operators are extortionary and the trains themselves are too low ridership (largely because they cannot be on time when freight takes priority, and also because trains on the freight tracks are slow by track limits Amtrak cannot improve and freight operators have no reason to). Amtrak can be inefficient, but blaming its unprofitable lines on Amtrak is absurd.

There is also the whole infrastructure and transit should not be profitable. Roads in the US are never profitable. If you put a toll on it, its usually only there long enough to recoup the initial construction costs. Ongoing maintenance and unkeep still come out of state DoT budgets. The fact people want the passenger rail lines to be profitable while subsidizing the interstates completely and then wonder why there isn't more demand for trains is a major 4head mood (especially when basically nobody anywhere can live car free).

Just wait for O3, its gonna be a real knockout.

we'd like to hope that it wasn't just someone getting an email and replying in 15 seconds with "SOLD"!

A lot are unemployable and can't afford or are unable to upkeep a house even if given one. We need safety nets to house them, but you can't really stick them in townhouses and expect them to still be livable in five years.

I looked into trying to do vacant rehabs for MD contractors licenses require 2 years of W-2 labor related to contracting. I've built houses with my dad and done my own work in PA, but even when I did part time at his construction co I wasn't getting pay stubs, I was being paid cash after the day, as a lot of handymen in the area are. That requirement for traceable employment history makes the ability to get a contractors license to pull permits in the city, I feel, almost impossible.

Requiring additional inspections of someone with less qualifications that they have to pay out of pocket, sure, go for it. But I can do the work, but I have no way to prove I can that meets these requirements. Previous coworkers can't just vouch for me.

Immigrants will not be able to rehab anything if they can't get contractors licensing and pull permits. I'd love to see MD law amended so there is some way to circumvent that 2 years of W-2 requirement.

I live on Pratt St and there are plenty of vacants around here but its not a food desert, we have the Food Depot and Pricerite nearby, plus the area is serviced by Citylink Purple and Blue and the cirulator orange terminates at the Pricerite. I think areas like this definitely make sense to put a concentrated effort into rehabbing the vacants, especially when all it really needs to be accessible is some protected bike lanes into downtown.

It would make sense in the short term to subsidize relocating straggler residents and bulldozing the highest vacancy rate blocks (80%+). The city can take the land and sell it out if someone wants to redevelop, but for now leaving them up just perpetuates crime and destitution.

What problems are created, again? As we already discussed the homestead tax exemption in MD already protects current residents from seeing huge upswings in property tax, and you already claimed and I rebutted that vacants don't pay taxes or that nobody buys tax defunct property

The city could pass a piecemeal of ordinances to address this, or it could just reform the tax code - something people have been hankering for for years, anyway - in a way that adds revenue and creates positive rather than perverse incentives (atm, improving your property makes you pay more in taxes, and at such high property tax rates as Bmore city has, it means you are pressured to make your property minimally functional for your needs to avoid paying more taxes).

> so the city would have to spend years in court and tax sale

The city doesn't "spend" a lot on tax sales, its mostly an automated system. The courts only get involved if the owner of a tax lien takes their lien to court after 9 months of non-payment, and then its procedural - nobody will show up on the other side, so the lienholder gets title rights.

Like I said, right now every new property that goes to tax sale gets bid on without fail. Investors are losing a lot of money on tax lien buys, even. There were tax liens on two houses on my block in 2021 that both got bid up to the property appraisal rather than the lien value, and then both liens were paid, so those buying the liens were out tens of thousands each (which are just a business tax expense writeoff for them).

Now to be fair, there is a reason those tax liens are bought at inflated prices, its because someone who can get that 9 month court hearing for title rights doesn't actually become owner of the property, they obtain title rights to it. Which means they can sit on assignment of title forever without ever being responsible for the taxes. They own it, but they aren't responsible for it. This is another broken system that needs revision, but for now investors are definitely buying tax lien property in Baltimore if the lien amount is less than the appraisal.

> it's not the tax structure that is stopping development

There are 10 year old vacant notices still in effect in Downtown. Some of these lots pay hundreds of dollars in property tax in the heart of the city. For damn sure they are being floated in perpetuity thanks to the tax code. Investors love hoarding, and property in Baltmore is cheap and taxes favor them letting it sit and rot, so that is what they do. Yes, there are neighborhoods where violence keeps investment out, but plenty of the city is not that bad yet still is plagued by persistent vacancy.

Some of my favorites are 37-41 W Preston St. Huge commercial office zoned buildings, one vacant since the 90s and the other for a decade, and the church across the street owns and pays their taxes. But the windows are rotted and the buildings have gone unused for forever. The church probably holds them in trust, but the fact thats even happening despite them being prime commercial real estate in the middle of Midtown right by Penn Station highlights the problem.

> the taxes have to come from somewhere

Mostly from vacant and underutilized property (and there is a lot of it) now having greater outstanding tax burden. Most of the vacants in Bmore are actually paying their taxes, or they would go to tax sale. There are a lot of properties that have been tax delinquent for so long its not worth buying the tax lien anymore, but they are pretty rare. Basically any property that can be got for under its appraisal value gets its tax leans bought at the annual tax sales.

This happens because these properties represent perverse equity. The city habitually appraises everything below its market rate valuation, largely because the property tax rate is so high, and this means that property you obtain can be mortgaged in the private market for more than the city thinks its worth. Especially if you roll that mortgage, or just use the depreciation from the city against your purchase as a business loss, which a lot of the fake pseudo LLCs in Bmore do all the time with derelect vacants getting lower and lower city appraisals.

I only suggest LVT because 1. these properties would still pay their taxes, but there would be pressure on the owners to offload them to be developed for use rather than just hoarded for their depreciated improvement value. 2. there are a lot of them. 3. current home owners are protected by the homestead tax exemption. 4. the city is awful at actually enforcing fines, penalties, etc and state equity of taxation laws might prevent entirely the levying of fines against certain things (like say, vacant notices). They also put the pressure where you want it - vacants in downtown or well off areas should cost a fortune to keep derelict.

I think we want different things is part of the problem. Baltmore is poised to be a place for milennials seeking urbanism - there are entire blocks of downtown vacant that can be redeveloped, state center has to be replaced, the city should look to rip out 83 past Penn Station in the next decade, MLK needs to stop being a scar cutting off half the city, the road to nowhere needs to go away, etc. The red line should be built, hopefully the green extension and yellow lines too. All these things and more can make Baltimore desirable to live in for a generation that can't afford New York, LA, DC, etc prices but can still have a walkable, bikable, transit oriented city. The complete streets ordinance maybe gives me too much hope.

Does that mean 120 year old 2 story brick townhouses might get leveled for 5+ story apartment buildings? Probably. Does it displace people? Urban renewal has to, and if the city saw that kind of growth it would have the kind of incoming revenues to catch people before they get lost in the wave. The alternative is continued population decline, more vacancy, worse roads, more violence and poverty and desperation. The city got gutted by white flight and the state for a century and Wes Moore ain't great but hes the best shot Bmore has had in a while at turning things around.

But incentives matter. There are reasons Baltimore is unique in the Northeast Corridor for its degree of abandoned property. There are structural things the city can do like an LVT to both grow revenue and promote growth that have proven results around the world. I'm not suggesting an LVT like nobody has done it before. Places like Australia have had it for decades with proven results.

Thats tied into everything though. Corrupt af city government can't do social programs and tell the cops not to enforce law, corrupt cops don't enforce the laws they should, corrupt schools can't educate kids, etc.

If the BPD got reformed and the state prosecutor wasn't shit telling them not to prosecute violent crime they could at least get the dangerous off the street, its just gonna be expensive and ongoing, and there needs to be a multi-pronged approach to stop people from falling through societies cracks and ending up so messed up.

Others have posted some good reading on the subject - but you basically abolish the current charter, rewrite it, and have the public vote on it. In the gap between the measure being passed and taking effect the city government gets the new structure in order before the charter switches over - you reinterview everyone, you rehire some portion of the existing force, and you do hiring for new staff all in advance of the switch.

Of course, BPD being BPD, they would flip a tit and possibly burn the city down before that happens, but thats kinda why it has to happen.

Part of it is going to probably require state and federal aid to train up new officers with a new academy and reformed training. This is probably something the city cannot do with just its own money. But the state of MD has been interested in varying regards of doing this for a long time because it hurts the entire state to have the largest economic center in the state have such a corrupt and broken police force. I'm pretty sure the state level could afford the transition, but federal funding might also be involved since its so close to DC.

Maryland and Baltimore have homestead tax exemptions that prevent your property taxes from going up more than 4% per year. That means the neighbors house would only see 4% more taxes per year if owner occupied. I shoulda mentioned that in the first post, but that law is what makes a switch to LVT work.

And your taxes wouldn't go up dramatically. A 3 story rowhouse is not appraising for double a two story. I'm not sure of anywhere in the city where the 3k+ square foot mansion houses with hvac and 4 bathrooms are next to 1000 sq ft single bathroom radiator heated ones. Like they are often blocks away, but LVT is cumulative against your neighbors rather than just flat, so rich areas would have much higher land values than poor, and the betwen has a gradated tax drop.

As it is now, the tax code says if you don't improve your land, you pay less in tax, and thats enabling people to hoard derelict property that has extremely low tax rates. Its not a pancea for the vacancies, but it reverses a trend that incentivizes them.

You seem to think that with an LVT two story blocks like, say, Pigtown would suddenly double or triple their property taxes, but the whole point is to average the taxes out so that vacants get punished more and developers have more incentive to build up.

I will admit, I don't think the historic townhouses in most of the city are sacred. They are, ultimately, just brick when their interiors rot and get burned out from arson. If historic preservation keeps places vacant and unlivable, the question becomes do we want Baltimore to be a mausoleum to 19th century brickwork or a livable city.

And nothing stops you from just adding a third, fourth, or fifth story to existing brick, or just requiring replacement construction adhere to those 19th century design standards of brick face. The real threat to preservation is things like Heritage Crossing, where entire neighborhoods are flattened and replaced with single family detached sprawl that plagues the rest of the country, and that is more a zoning thing than anything - and yeah, single family yarded properties should definitely be banned for new development within Bmore city limits.

Abolish and reform the BPD, there is no way to salvage it.