Attendees:
Charlie Bond, Robin Budish, Art Cohen, Kelly Cross, Kathy Epstein, Jeff LaNoue, Mac McComas, Klaus Philipsen, Jimmy Rouse, Jill Sorensen, Sandy Sparks, Maris St. Cyr
Welcome and Introductions:
Kelly Cross (chair), wished everyone a happy New Year and opened the meeting.
Response from the City and State to the Rail Transit “Quick Hits”
Jimmy Rouse reported on the January 17, 2014 meeting at which the “Quick Hits” list was presented to 9 senior level staff City officials including Khalil Zaied – Director of Operations, William Johnson – BCDOT and Billy Hwang – Deputy Director, BCDOT. Klaus Philipsen and Jon Laria also attended the meeting. Khalil was very impressed with the presentation and commented that the handout booklet was brilliant, simple and effective. As a next step, Khalil recommended we create a higher level working group to further review the “Quick Hits” list with BCDOT, City, MTA and Transit Choices.
- The meeting with Robert Smith, MTA Administrator and CEO to present the “Quick Hits” list is scheduled for January 29, 2014.
- It is important to keep the pressure on City and State officials in an effort to keep things moving so that the implementation process can begin.
- The next big challenge for our group is to focus on longer term projects and funding.
- Billy Hwang, Deputy Director BCDOT will arrange for us to present the “Quick Hits” PowerPoint presentation to the BRBT board.
Discussion Points:
- Klaus Philipsen: Khalil Zaied said the City needs our support for the Red Line during the meeting on January 17, 2014. Further, Khalil asked for our help to get them get a constituency together to deal with the implementation of some of the “Quick Hits” such as dedicated bike lanes for example.
- Jimmy Rouse and Klaus Philipsen proposed that rather than take a position on the Red Line, we focus on getting what we have on the ground currently running optimally.
Streetcars:
Sandy Sparks: integrating streetcars into a mass transit system should be the priority and the main focus of the Rail Transit group.
Transit Draft Guiding Principles:
- Jeff LaNoue, on behalf of the bike work group remarked that the Draft Guiding Principles (DGP) as currently written, are very generic and could be applied to any city in the country. If we keep the DGP brief, the focus will be on the Quick Hits.
- All agreed that the chairs of each work group would meet by February 7, 2014 with Art Cohen, Jill Sorensen, Paulo Gregory Harris and Klaus Philipsen to finalize the DGP. Kelly Cross offered to organize the meeting.
Five Year Plan – how to proceed:
- Kelly Cross raised the question about how broad should the group go regarding rail transit projects.
- Rail Transit Group: 1) land use at rail stops, 2) development (developers should build projects on efficient rail lines) – it’s irresponsible to build office space without quality mass transit nearby, or not building on mass transit lines.
- Jimmy Rouse: what modifications or revisions do we want to make to the current rail system to create an integrated system?
- CMTA should take the lead on MARC.
- Light Rail: do we want to talk about or support extending the Blue line out to Columbia?
- Metro: can it be extended beyond Hopkins? Should we be advocating for the extension?
- Streetcar: do we want to add streetcars? Take a look at 1) technology (wireless), 2) funding (how do we fund), 3) what routes do we want – perhaps create sub-groups to address these things.
- Jeff LaNoue: we should make better use of the system we have in Baltimore. How do we look at each station and get disadvantage people to jobs?
- Klaus Philipsen: we need to get our core back in order. What is the transit mode that would make the most sense, how can we fill vacancies around our mass transit.
Discussion Points:
- Jill Sorensen: incentivize developers to build projects on efficient rail lines.
- Charlie Bond: incentivizing is best when it comes through policy.
Next Topics for Discussion:
- Continuing with existing work groups, rename the groups or reconfigure them.
- Important for all work groups to consider 1) Land use, 2) Financing, 3) Advocacy – broad appeal/approval, 4) Marketing/Communication.