Gunpowder Chronicle posted on November 16, 2008 4:09 PM | Rating:
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Maryland's Light Rail is William Donald Schaefer's Great White Elephant that continues to fail. According to the Baltimore Sun, the MTA is closing light rail between North Ave and Hunt Valley, and restricting service south of North Ave to single car trains, due to even more problems with the wheels. When will anyone in Soddom on the Severn realize that a) there is nothing "light" in Light Rail and b) this project has been an abject failure from the beginning.
The MTA is blaming the problem on the "flattening" of wheels caused by excessive breaking, most likely from overuse of the emergency breaking system. Uh huh. They say that this time of year, leaves fall on the tracks, and decompose, leaving a light film that makes the tracks slippery.
They just realized this now? In the good old days of American railroading -- and Baltimore is the birthplace of the first commerical railroad -- innovative engineers would have come up with an easy solution for that. The probably would have attach rotary sweepers to the pilots of each car to sweep the track on every pass. They also would have inspected the wheelsets more frequently, and rotated wheelsets when necessary. In fact, real railroads do this all the time.
The Maryland MTA is an abject failure as a state agency. At a time when O'Guvnah is banging the drum for Maryland drivers to utilize more mass transit, his own agency can't manage the system they have. And that system is poor. If I were to use Light Rail (when its running), I would have a 25 minute drive to Hunt Valley, and then a 60 minute ride downtown. On the worst commuting mornings -- last Wednesday comes to mind -- my drive is no more than 90 minutes. What advantage does Mass Transit give me? (Note: the bus routes are even worse. It would be 110 minutes by bus according to the MTA route map.)
The Light Rail was a poorly conceived concept. Single track when built, congestion has been the hallmark of the system. Instead of using narrow-gauge construction, they chose standard gauge track with tight turns and steep grades -- increasing the wear and tear that shows up in today's wheels problems. They also chose heavy-weight commuter car designs instead of lighter single-car designs that could operate more efficiently. And they chose high-maintenance electric catenary instead of natural gas genset locomotives.
In other words, the repeated nearly every mistake of the old Maryland and Pennsylvania -- designing a model railroad at a scale of 12 inches to the foot. It is, and remains, William Donald Schaefer's Great White Elephant.