Two years after Gov. Wes Moore revived the Red Line, Baltimore’s proposed east-west light rail feels mired in uncertainty.

In June 2023, Moore reversed former Gov. Larry Hogan’s 2015 decision to cancel the roughly 14-mile transit project. Then, a year ago, Moore rejected bus rapid transit in favor of light rail for the line stretching from Woodlawn to Bayview, vowing to “walk every step of the way” with the community until trains were running.

Well, it’s June again. There’s no news conference this year. The next project milestone was expected to have been announced by the end of 2024. Even if voted into a second term, chances are Moore won’t see the Red Line completed as currently envisioned by the time he leaves office.

Funding the project, estimated to cost up to $8 billion, will require some tough — or creative — decisions as the state navigates both a strangling budget reality and unprecedented federal uncertainty. That could require the state to pivot if it wants to break ground anytime soon.

Moore remains committed to “enhancing east-west transit in Baltimore,” a spokesperson said in a statement that also highlighted the administration’s investments in the Maryland Transit Administration after “years of neglect,” including new hires and rehabilitation of the current light rail.

“Our commitment to transit and Baltimore’s future is clear,” said Carter Elliott IV, Moore’s spokesperson. “And we will continue to find a path for advancing progress for east-west transit in Baltimore, even if we face headwinds in Washington.”

(Mis)alignment

Planning and preliminary engineering are forging ahead, with more than $150 million allocated in coming years. The project team was expected to settle on which of three routes between Security Square Mall and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center to proceed with by now.

The MTA is still conducting technical analysis of each route’s environmental impacts, said Veronica Battisti, the agency’s spokesperson, in an email. She did not say when the team expects to complete environmental review and present a preferred route. But she said it expects to formalize everything by the first quarter of 2027, clearing the way for construction

Projects such as the Red Line are nearly impossible without some federal funding. When Hogan canceled the $2.9 billion Red Line 1.0, the feds already had promised $900 million, money the state gave up.

Though it’s been assumed that President Donald Trump wouldn’t embrace transit expansion, his nominee to run the Federal Transit Administration got ringing endorsements from transportation workers’ unions and the American Public Transportation Association.

And Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2026 budget, released in May, maintained funding for the grants the state planned to pursue for Red Line construction, Battisti said.

But at the same time, Trump wants to slash public services while boosting military and border spending. He’s also threatened to pull previously allocated transportation money for states that don’t assimilate his immigration policies.

That sort of uncertainty is poison for complicated, multiyear projects like the Red Line, said Beth Osbourne, director of Transportation for America, a think tank, and a former assistant U.S. transportation secretary.

Federal grants are best considered “last money in,” she said, and the state should focus on getting its own ducks (trains) in a row.

“Control what you can control,” Osbourne said. “States that don’t have clear and limited priorities themselves are not well-positioned to get federal dollars and deliver projects.”

The state’s six-year transportation spending plan secured some transit rehabilitation initiatives, like for the current light rail. But state money for expansion has long favored Washington-area transit, not Baltimore’s, or gone instead to roads.

“When Gov. Moore’s first term comes to an end, it will be the seventh consecutive gubernatorial term with no expansion of the Baltimore region’s public transportation system, and meanwhile, we are expanding roads and highways every year,” said Brian O’Malley, president of the Central Maryland Transportation Alliance, a local research and advocacy organization. “That’s a choice.”

There’s been so much emphasis on raising revenues to keep the budget afloat, O’Malley said, but not the same focus on how they are spent.

Osbourne called it a “spread the peanut butter” sort of approach that’s trying to do too much and won’t deliver truly transformative projects.

A path forward

Unless Moore wants to blow up the budget and pull a William Donald Schaefer — the former governor built the first segment of Baltimore’s light rail with state funds — the state must gamble on federal money.

The MTA could focus the next few years on getting the Red Line shovel-ready — design, right-of-way acquisition, determining state-level funding — and bet on a friendly candidate taking over the White House on Jan. 20, 2029.

It also requires taking the bet that Hogan won’t run successfully for governor again.

The state could pursue a public-private partnership, but the ongoing saga of the Purple Line’s rising costs and delays may have spoiled that idea.

There are other options, too.

Light rail vehicles can carry far more passengers than buses can, but the MTA’s own modeling shows there’s little difference in travel time between the modes. Giving bus rapid transit a shot would save a ton of money.

Asked if Moore is open to or exploring contingency options, Elliott said the administration “will work to identify the strategies that can best deliver improved transit options to Baltimore. With the uncertainty of the new federal Administration, our team is actively reviewing the best paths forward.”

There are also phased approaches. In Seattle, officials dug a tunnel used by buses for years until there was money to lay down tracks for light rail. The MTA could build a section of the line and then expand, like Minneapolis did.

And speaking of Metro, that subway tunnel still underneath Baltimore debuted in the early 1980s with the intention to expand. The MTA has shot down calls for doing the Red Line as a subway expansion, saying it’s too expensive to build.

A Red Line subway would require extensive tunneling on the East Side. But in West Baltimore, just about a half-mile separates the subway tunnel from the Red Line corridor where a train could run aboveground in the median of the stretch of U.S. 40 known as the Highway to Nowhere.

There’s another big tunnel project in Baltimore that’s about to get underway.

Hey, Amtrak, what’s the plan for those tunnel-boring machines after they dig the future Frederick Douglass Tunnel in a few years?