Baltimore City Council members on Thursday pressed officials in the city school district and the Maryland Transit Administration to find solutions to improve mass transit for public school students.

The council was hearing testimony on a bill introduced by Councilman Mark Conway in January that would require the school system to study the root causes of chronic absenteeism — when students miss 10% or more of school days in a year — and to propose solutions.

One of the root causes, councilmembers said, is the lack of reliable transportation.

As many as 25,000 middle and high school students are unable to get to school on time every day because of an inefficient state transit system, a Baltimore Banner investigation found.

City Council President Zeke Cohen said he wants the school system, the MTA and the city to explore whether a memorandum of understanding between the agencies could be rewritten to make progress in shortening the lengthy rides for students.

The average city student’s trip to school on mass transit takes about 40 minutes, which is more than twice as long as the time that neighboring Baltimore County students spend on yellow buses and longer than the average adult’s commute to work, according to the Banner investigation.

While Cohen said he believed that MTA Administrator Holly Arnold had been focused on improving the system for all residents, he said students needed particular attention.

“Given the challenges that we have with transportation and with safety of our young people, it is critically important that every single one of us be part of the solution,” Cohen said. “The time to come with solutions is now.”

He said that while the city schools offer middle and high school students the opportunity to pick the school they want to go to, “it is not really a choice. It takes you 90-plus minutes to get to school or to get home from school.”

City Councilman Mark Parker asked Arnold if the agency has set performance standards for getting students to school.

The agency, Arnold said, does not have student-specific performance standards that it is trying to hit, although it has improved how often buses and trains arrive on time and has reduced the number that don’t show up. An online dashboard makes data for all transit publicly available.

The Banner investigation found that 1 in 4 buses don’t arrive on time in the morning and that only 1 in 3 are on time when students leave in the afternoon.

Buses run infrequently, often every 20 or 35 minutes during the times students are commuting to and from school, The Banner found. The time between buses is often a problem for students because more than half must transfer from one train or bus to another on their way to school.

City students have worse grades and attendance in first-period classes than for the rest of the day, according to the Banner investigation.

Councilman Zac Blanchard said he wanted to use MTA data to look at how much the proposed Red Line would improve a student’s ride to school. The 14-mile light rail line would connect the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in western Baltimore County with Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in East Baltimore.

The city could help improve transit speeds by creating more lanes dedicated to buses, giving light rail trains priority over cars and building the Red Line, Arnold said. Because it receives federal grants, the MTA is prohibited from dedicating bus lines for students only, she said.

She added that the MTA’s mission includes students and many other city residents who take the bus, but Cohen said that the state has a constitutional obligation to give students an education, as well.

“We know it’s not working for our kids, and so I would ask that we dig a little deeper in terms of the partnership, and consider some new or different ways of getting our kids through school on time,” he said.

Brian O’Malley, president of the Central Maryland Transportation Alliance, an advocacy organization, said in a statement that the lack of investment in transit has made the system unreliable for everyone, but particularly students riding across town at non-peak times for transit.

“Baltimore City does not run the buses and trains, but it does control the streets and signals,” he said. “It could do things to speed up buses and the light rail that would help the MTA run more frequent service for the same budget. Put in bus priority lanes, enforce them, build curb bump-outs, and adjust traffic signals to help buses and the light get through the city faster.”

An MTA official said in an email Thursday night that it already increases service during the hours students commute to and from school, which it considers peak times for all riders.

City Council members also noted that many students feel unsafe riding MTA buses and light rail, and asked whether whether the school system had ever estimated what it would cost to provide yellow bus service.

Alison Perkins-Cohen, the city schools chief of staff, replied: “We have not priced it out. It would be very expensive.”

The city school board has not discussed the issue in public, but board member Ashley Esposito said in an interview that she is concerned that the failure of transit is harming student performance.

“We can definitely keep pushing perfect attendance and coming to school, but if this is a huge barrier to participation, then until we deal with transportation it is hard to realize that goal,” she said.

Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify that MTA considers the hours students commute to be peak times for all transit riders and increases service at those times.

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.