If the Baltimore region’s transportation network were a student, it might be time to start talking about additional supports and interventions.

The “teacher” — the Central Maryland Transportation Alliance, a local advocacy and policy research group — released its latest report card Wednesday, giving the region a D overall. It’s a slight improvement from the D- that the region was awarded years ago, but the same grade it received back in 2015.

The report compares the Baltimore metro region, including nearly 3 million people living in Baltimore and the six counties around it, with other comparable-sized metro areas across 12 different transportation indicators. It’s based on multiple data reports and surveys, including from the U.S. Census.

The region made some small improvements since the last report card issued two years ago — most notably in the reliability of public transit — but backslid in air pollution and commute times. It stagnated across five categories, including two back-to-back failing grades for the percentage of jobs accessible by a 60-minute-or-less public transit ride (7.5%) and the percentage of workers who commute 45 minutes or more one way to their job (21%).

Brian O’Malley, the transportation alliance’s president and CEO, said in an interview that transportation planning and spending too often is reactive to trends instead of proactively focused on outcomes. He hopes people who read the report card will use it to better understand the region.

“What outcomes are we trying to cause and how can we prioritize our transportation spending to achieve them? Here are 12 outcomes that if we could improve on, we would all be better off as a region,” he said.

Here’s how the grades shifted over the past two years.

On the rise

• Job access by car: Workers can reach about 21% of jobs with a drive of 20 minutes or less, an improvement from 17% two years ago.
• Affordability: About 36% of households spend more than 45% of their income on housing and transportation combined, a significant improvement from 44% of households two years ago.

Transit reliability

The region saw the biggest improvement in this metric, in large part because of better data.

The transportation alliance hired independent data analysts at Aries for Transit to monitor and analyze the real-time locations of Maryland Transit Administration vehicles since 2023. They compare what they see with the MTA’s posted stop times to measure how reliably MTA services adhere to their schedules.

Last time around, they found that 20% of the MTA vehicles that should have been in service didn’t show up in the data, which meant either the trip had been canceled or the vehicle’s tracking device was not working. The MTA has since bolstered the tracking of their buses.

This year, 90% of MTA vehicles that were scheduled to arrive showed up in the data, resulting in better data.

However, the mark for schedule adherence didn’t change — just 75% of vehicles during the reporting period arrived on time, roughly the same as in 2023. This tracks with an independent analysis of MTA tracking data by The Baltimore Banner.

Among comparable regions, only Orlando’s transit system scored worse in schedule adherence.

The findings also come with a relatively big grain of salt. A cyberattack over the summer impacted the MTA vehicles’ tracking capabilities. The transit alliance report relies on data from a four-month period preceding the cyberattack, but notes that transit riders in Baltimore have dealt with more uncertainty since August, as some vehicles haven’t shown up on tracking apps.

Slipping

• State of good repair: This indicator measures how well the state is maintaining the region’s roads, bridges and transit infrastructure. The CMTA bases it on an annual report from the American Society of Civil Engineers. The state’s roads and bridges grade fell and the transit grade stagnated. However, it should be noted that the state took steps to improve transit infrastructure quality this year that will bear fruit in the coming years.
• Choice in commute mode: Roughly 87% of residents drive to work alone, an increase of two percentage points from two years ago.
• Air pollution: The number of days when ozone levels in the air exceeded federal standards grew to 12 in 2024 from just two in 2022. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reclassified the region from a moderate to a serious non-attainment area.
• Commute time: Baltimore continues to be at the back of the pack with a 30-minute average commute time via car, transit, bike or walking — two minutes longer than in the previous period. Baltimore drivers lost an average of 63 hours and $1,160 to traffic congestion in 2025, an increase from the year prior, according to data analytics firm INRIX.