Digging into Baltimore tunnel equity: Right issue, wrong target | STAFF COMMENTARY

Proposed Douglass Tunnel unlikely to cause the hardship that a lack of a Red Line tunnel could spell for West Baltimore residents.

For a half-century, West Baltimore’s “Highway to Nowhere” has stood as a testament to how big transportation projects can run over, literally and figuratively, disadvantaged communities. The demolition of hundreds of homes and businesses to create what turned out to be an isolated 1.4-mile-long stretch of sunken blacktop was an example of what happens when a predominantly Black, working-class community is seen by the powerful as no more than an obstacle to progress.

Recently, similar concerns were raised by a coalition of city neighborhood groups, which has filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Transportation over plans to build a twin-tubed Frederick Douglass Tunnel for electrified MARC and Amtrak passenger service. The complaint claims the $6-billion replacement for the roughly 150-year-old Baltimore & Potomac Tunnel would disproportionately harm predominantly Black and low-income communities, including Sandtown-Winchester, Bridgeview/Greenlawn and Midtown-Edmondson.

And while there’s no denying the past, we fear these groups are getting exorcised about the wrong tunnel. The Douglass Tunnel could be a difference-maker for high-speed passenger rail in the Northeast Corridor, a critically important economic asset not just for this city but for the nation. Plans call for it to extend deep underground and to not allow passage to diesel freight trains (except under temporary or emergency operations), so the adverse impact should be modest — particularly compared to the fallout of another project that isn’t getting nearly as much attention as it deserves from these same communities.

People should be protesting the possibility that the Red Line, a 14-mile east-west transit line from Woodlawn to Johns Hopkins Bayview, will be developed without a downtown tunnel as was originally envisioned. Given how Gov. Wes Moore and the Maryland General Assembly haven’t fully addressed the state’s depleted Transportation Trust Fund, it’s hard to believe the MTA will be able to afford the tunnel option.

Think an unsightly ventilation facility raises questions about equity? How about sluggish service to thousands of working-class, Black Baltimoreans who don’t have access to alternative transportation? Maryland’s current governor should be held to task not only for resurrecting the project after it was killed in 2015, but for ensuring that it will provide transportation infrastructure that truly works and won’t end up as a “track to nowhere” instead.

Baltimore Sun editorial writers offer opinions and analysis on news and issues relevant to readers. They operate separately from the newsroom.