Express BusLink launched to better connect Baltimore suburbs

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New bus routes aimed at better connecting Baltimore area suburbs via mass transit launched Monday.

The new Express BusLink service, part of the wider $135 million BaltimoreLink overhaul, connects Towson to White Marsh, Owings Mills Metro Station to Towson, Old Court Metro Station to BWI Airport/Marc Station and Columbia to Baltimore’s Harbor East neighborhood.

A one-way-trip on the Express BusLink system costs a rider $2.10, the same as other express routes in the transit system. It also takes about 45 minutes to travel from the White Marsh Park & Ride to Osler Drive near Towson University, a trip that news media members and state officials took on Monday.

“Express Link is really the first down payment on our new Baltimore Link system. It’s the smallest of all the changes we’re making, and it’s one that we could make rather quickly, and it didn’t involve a lot of infrastructure improvements, like the rest of City Link will involve,” said Paul Comfort, Maryland Transit Administration administrator and CEO.

Gov. Larry Hogan in October announced plans to revamp the mass transit system in the Baltimore area to better connect residents with jobs, entertainment districts and other modes of transportation.

A big part of that change was to overhaul bus routes that essentially followed 50-year-old street car routes, most of which went through downtown Baltimore. While there are about 145,000 jobs in downtown Baltimore, Comfort said, there are roughly 600,000 jobs in the metro area other than downtown.

“Every route shouldn’t have to go downtown. So, for instance, if you’re in White Marsh now, and you want to go to Towson, you have to do downtown, switch buses and then comeback out like a ‘v,’” Comfort said. “So we wanted to create routes where people need to go today.”

James F. Ports Jr., deputy secretary of the Maryland Department of Transportation and a Baltimore County resident, said he was confident the suburb-to-suburb links would draw customers despite the car-centric nature of many of these communities.

“You talk about the commuter routes, and we’re very successful on the commuter routes, and that’s the same culture that  you’re talking about … this is very similar to our commuter routes. So we expect it to be successful in the same way,” Ports said.

The Hogan administration rolled out its BaltimoreLink plans after it decided to nix the proposed $2.9 billion Red Line light rail line. It was argued that revamping existing bus lines, with technological upgrades like traffic signal priority and dedicated bus lanes, would be a much cheaper and more efficient method to improve mass transit in the Baltimore metro area.

The proposed light-rail line, which included a tunnel underneath downtown, would have connected the Social Security Administration in Woodlawn with Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in East Baltimore. Backers, in the wake of April’s riots, also argued it would provide access to jobs West Baltimore residents lack.

Advocates argued the decision not to go forward with the Red Line squandered an opportunity to bring real improvements to Baltimore’s mass transit system, while BaltimoreLink just shuffles routes on an inadequate bus system.

Meanwhile, some transportation experts argue Express BusLink and BaltimoreLink are nice but the area’s mass transit woes require much more significant investment in transit infrastructure. Dru Schmidt-Perkins, CEO and president of 1,000 Friends of Maryland, said the last regional transportation plan was completed in 2002 and is in desperate need of an update.

“We certainly feel strongly about these issues, and think on the one hand linking these communities, making it easier for people to get where they need to go is critical. It is one piece of a very complicated transportation puzzle in need,” Schmidt-Perkins said.