IMO after the Red Line, the biggest improvement that can be made to Light Rail in Baltimore after the red line would be to move the Blue/Yellow line trains into the Howard Street Tunnel. Ever taken the Baltimore light rail? The trains crawl maddeningly down Howard, but they really fly quite satisfyingly elsewhere on the route.

A new bypass tunnel that would move freight trains out from beneath Howard is already being planned. In a decade or so when that’s done, talk about a perfect opportunity.

The Cantonites are in a fervor over this. I attended a meeting, and all they did was yell about how this would ruin their neighborhood. When presented with the fact that the street will be completely gridlocked at all hours by 2020, and that the train would RELIEVE that pressure, they ignored the statement and said that the train will ruin their property values, which is also false.

I got the feeling the underlying theme is that Canton is used to their cars, and used to not having low income black people having access to their neighborhood. So, they are afraid of moving into the future with a rail line, and would rather be secluded.

The folks in W. Baltimore have somewhat more room to gripe, as the street the train will go down is narrower than Boston St., but still in heavy use as an East-West corridor (which is of course the reason the train should that route to begin with). One of the problems is that there’s only one proposed Red Line stop in that stretch, making it seem more like something people use to get through their neighborhood, rather than something for the neighborhood.

On the note of connections, I think you overstate the problems a bit. Under 4C, here will be a Red Line station more or less directly underneath the current Convention Center light rail stop, making that transfer simple. My understanding is that there is also an underground pedestrian tunnel planned between the current Charles Center metro subway stop and the proposed Red Line stop a block south.