When the Baltimore Metro opened in November 1983, it was supposed to be the beginning of something big. Instead, it became one of the region’s biggest what-ifs.

The subway’s first day awed passengers, The Baltimore Sun reported. Stations were pristine, security guards friendly and plentiful. Passengers smiled at one another; there was an aura of “family dressing up and going to Grandma’s for holiday.”

At first, morning trains were standing room only, and ridership climbed to tens of thousands on weekdays, recalled Ron Hartman, who was deputy administrator of the then-Maryland Mass Transit Administration, in an interview with The Banner. In a city long-segregated by race and class, white-collar executives and doctors sat beside Lexington Market stall workers and city dwellers in packed train cars whizzing 8 miles (later expanded to 14 from Owings Mills to Johns Hopkins Hospital), mostly under Baltimore.

It was supposed to be the first line in an entire subway system, like the Washington Metro. But Baltimore came in at the end of a federal funding blitz. Money soon dried up; expansion never happened.

Over the years, the sheen of the lone line faded, both literally and figuratively. With more than 40-year-old railcars, the line experienced more breakdowns per mile than any similar system nationwide in 2023, according to federal data.

As reliability suffered, so too did the number of riders. That initial sense of wonder has been replaced by “What happened?”

But change is coming.

In 2025, the first of 78 new railcars will go into service as the Maryland Transit Administration begins replacing the original fleet. It’s a nearly $557 million investment, mostly funded by the federal government.

The MTA says that the new cars will fix many of the service issues.

Getting back on track

On good days, it’s hard to beat Metro’s efficiency. Passengers can cross town from Lexington Market to the Johns Hopkins medical campus in 6 minutes, faster than driving.

Marian Grant started riding in the late 1990s as a nursing student — she could count on a half hour of studying on the subway each way between Reisterstown and Johns Hopkins, and loved not having to drive.

The experience was never “spotless,” she said, but largely reliable. She later got a job at the hospital and commuted daily with plenty of other “scrubs and briefcases” who worked downtown.

Times changed, though.

“The service is now totally unreliable,” said Grant, a certified nurse practitioner who now works mostly from home in policy consulting.

If she still commuted downtown daily, she said she’d probably drive.

The heavy rail line experienced major mechanical failures more often than any equivalent subway in the country in 2023, according to federal data. In an extreme case, the entire line shut down for multiple days due to a 2023 electrical fire, but mundane problems plague it more often — faulty train communications, single-tracking between stations — causing regular delays.

For riders like Grant, delays may be an inconvenience. But for people who depend on the line and have no car, service problems mean missed medical appointments or docked pay.

“We’re cutting a couple of trains every day,” Maryland Transit Administrator Holly Arnold said. “The level of service we’re providing, it’s not enough for the Baltimore region.”

Of the original 100 Metro railcars, only about half were available for service in 2023, according to federal reports. The aging fleet requires more maintenance than it used to, Arnold said.

The 78 new railcars will change things, she said. Trains could run every 8 minutes and arrive when the schedule says, Arnold said, restoring what riders say is most important — reliability. The line’s ridership has rebounded since plummeting during the pandemic, a trend that excites Arnold.

Officials also started rolling out plans for new development near stations in October, reversing an original sin that surrounded the stations with sprawling parking lots. They hope development creates destinations for riders like grocery and retail stores, as well as attracting new riders by adding housing nearby.

Arnold calls the Metro “Baltimore’s best kept secret.”

“We’re going to be encouraging more people to ride it,” she said. “We want the message out that it shouldn’t be a secret anymore.”

Buried problems

But some former riders say problems beyond reliability also need to be addressed.

Stations at times lack security guards or any official presence. Turnstiles often are left open. Many station elevators are out of order and money for other maintenance was deferred from the state transportation budget that lawmakers will vote on soon.

It’s not uncommon now to see people smoking or selling things on station platforms and in trains. One former rider shared a story of being sexually harassed by another passenger while alone on a train car.

Some Baltimore transit riders, not just on Metro, feel that service delays and disruptions, along with cleanliness and safety issues, are a sign the state doesn’t respect their time. It feels like the MTA has backed out of its social contract with those it serves, Grant said.

“That compact is broken at the moment,” Grant said.

The disrespect can seem mutual. On a recent December morning at the Johns Hopkins station, a teenager sat down on a train car and spat on the floor.

Arnold said the solution for such quality of life issues isn’t to send a bunch of police officers to arrest people who evade fares, light up a joint where they shouldn’t or who may be experiencing homelessness.

Her team already boosted cleaning operations at stations. With more funding, she said she wants to start a “transit ambassador” program of people in uniform whose job is to ride the system, talk with passengers, and create more of an “official presence” that deters bad behaviors.

Hartman, who still occasionally rides the Metro, has faith it can find a new life. He said he’d like to see it “grow and get upgraded” to better meet Baltimore’s transit needs.

Though new railcars won’t be a panacea for all of Metro’s issues, Arnold believes they can make good service days the standard, which could spark new life.