When you map vacant homes, the pattern is reminiscent of Baltimore's infamous 'Black butterfly.'
You can explore vacant properties further using
@WillFedder
‘s app.
It’s funny when people are NIMBYs about rail because they’re worried about the impact of vibrations. The Italians put a subway station and a tram stop at the Colosseum
Chevy Chase Historic District Nomination is asking the government to preserve a "community that was designed to be insulated from the cultural and economic diversity of the city." 👀
You can find a lot of good urbanism in the Baltimore area. There is also light rail. Unfortunately the urbanism and the light rail are in different locations
@girlie_athome
@PopCrave
Male artists should be willing to remove at least two borderline songs as a karmic offset in order to keep these in the set list
Canadian transit ridership always blows me away. Calgary looks like any other North American city, but their 37 mile light rail system moves 250k people a day
@p8stie
Do you think people talk about walkability as is in like, getting your steps in? 10+ miles?
You’re supposed to be able to walk as short of a distance as possible in a walkable area, it’s the % of trips possible by foot that you’re maximizing
"no fan would have to transfer more than once on game days." is funny because every Metro line intersects with all of the others.
So Leonsis's pitch for PY is that it has a property true of every single station in the system.
Ashburn is only 1 transfer from Branch Avenue!
The 2002 Baltimore rail plan was, although not perfect, surprisingly ahead of its time and should continue to be used as a platform for continued investment in the city's rail network for the foreseeable future
This is probably the best rendering of the 1968/1971 Baltimore metro plans that I’ve seen. Made by Reddit user lifemadesimple. A lot easier to read than the black and white map that circulates on here
Baltimore's light rail system is being entirely suspended after trains' electrical systems repeatedly had "fire and smoke events". These issues are related to rebuilds of the cars conducted by Alstom, the same company responsible for Amtrak's sidelined new Avelia Liberty trains.
My hottest anti-urbanist take is probably that the Baltimore Washington Parkway doesn’t have enough lanes. Not that more lanes would speed up traffic normally, I just think it would just get less snarled by accidents, roadwork, or even just drivers executing merges improperly
I will never have an ounce of respect for people who fight housing on the basis of environmentalism.
How is people commuting 20+ miles better for the environment than infill?
Baltimore only built 2 rail lines and then quit. What's unfortunate is that If we had only built these two rail lines (that are currently being studied), it would have been a pretty solid system on its own
First off, props to SEPTA for their attempt at squeezing a bus lane into that street.
Second, I am staying in a Hostel because it’s August & I love asking Euros how many vacation days they have before shaking my head at their response (at our own plight)
It’s crazy to me that we built the DC region a 6-line, 98-station metro-RER-hybrid system deep into the suburbs well after mass-motorization, but the 5 commuter rail lines (with ~60 stations) have largely been an afterthought until recently

@phriendlyphotog
It's cool how we built an entire baseball-oriented light rail line without trying to make anything useful out of the existing rail service to the station. You can say the same thing about WMATA & the MARC lines, though
Also, lmao at the first interaction I had: a Czech woman was heading to Baltimore and was like, “Oh, would it be okay if I asked you some questions about Baltimore?”
I was like: Miss, you have no idea how okay that question is. (I then crafted her an itinerary on the spot)
I noticed that Biden pronounces the “d” in Bawldamore. Did he pick that up from locals, or do they also say it like that in PA/DE?
The Delco/White Working Class Philly accents (idk the difference) are very similar to the WWC Baltimore accent, how do they say “Baltimore Avenue”?
Biden on the Baltimore port: "I have directed my team to move heaven and earth to reopen the port and rebuild the bridge as soon as humanly possible ... it is my intention that the federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge."
I'm in search of one (1) activity or eatery that I can use to justify a trip on the NHSL.
(It doesn't have to be a good justification. I want to ride the weird little train)
Ok we’re just going to Philly. Any recommendations for good neighborhoods to get an AirBnB in?
List of attributes:
- fixed rail transit
- dive bars
That’s basically it
🧵 comparing Druid Hill Park to Patterson Park.
If your goal was to make DHP as inaccessible to its community as possible - but you could only use a flat asphalt surface - I think you'd build this intersection. Compare it to the SW corner of Patterson Park 1/n
The murder rate is down 19% in 2024 thus far, per data collected directly from 236 cities across the US.
(Some major cities — like San Francisco, Baltimore, and Philidelphia — have seen much larger decreases.)
@BudrykZack
Alex III and his idiot son may have forced my family to flee Ukraine, but (((Yakov Sverdlov))) killed the entire Romanov family, so I guess it’s water under the bridge ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“Our city is different/unique, so we can’t do that” is the go-to line of status-quo enablers the world over, so it’s worth pointing out that the laws of physics that inform this design are actually very similar in Central Europe
Philly folks - if you end up getting priced out, you can come to Baltimore and have maybe 10x the impact on this city as you might elsewhere!
We've got 2 trains to build and 2 highways to destroy!
We've got (nominal, at least) support from politicians, but they need pushing
“'You can’t just wake up one day and say we’re going to put bike lanes when there have been families that raise their children to drive a car,' observed Councilwoman Sharon Green Middleton."
???
Bike lanes work in Cambridge, why not Baltimore? - Baltimore Sun
On Maryland Avenue, for example, a protected bike lane has not only reduced car crashes with pedestrians and cyclists, but it appears to have reduced crashes of all types.
Haters mad. I would NEVER disrespect this city
(with the exception of the city council, the Mayor, the city DOT, PennDOT, the PA legislature, the absolutely deranged Philly NIMBYs - all of whom I blocked years ago - and everyone else with such low aspirations for this place)
@flytrikeair
@justin_fenton
It happened too quickly. It hall happened in 100 seconds or so. You can listen to the audio here. The cop needed to stop traffic before heading up to alert the crew. But he wouldn’t have had time to save them. He’d also be dead
Baltimore's pattern of racial segregation, where a narrow majority non-Black & affluent corridor *bisects* the majority Black areas in the city is pretty distinct. It's hard to find examples elsewhere. Here's Philly, DC, and Cleveland as a comparison. I'll add some more
Baltimore’s rail system is kind of like if WMATA had just stopped here, but it also took like an hour to get from DCA to Stadium Armory because DDOT said cars had to be able to drive in the subway tunnels at all times in order to go antique shopping
A lot of folks have been saying that tall buildings will make Harborplace less appealing to tourists, but I have been to this part of Chicago a couple times, so I don’t find their case to be very persuasive. One of the tourist attractions is a boat tour to look at tall buildings
I wonder why MD & VA don’t get in on tolling 95. Why only let other states do it? It’s like $15-25 to drive from Arlington to Newark, but you can drive from Arlington to Baltimore on 95 for free
This a fun little coincidence. Here's Baltimore-Washington on the same scale as Chicago.
Baltimore-Washington Combined Statistical Area: 9.9 M people
Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area: 9.6 M people
@Lilibet99770962
@HalBrands
As Russian elites have already established such an extractive and corrupt economy, China's work is halfway done.
What's left are some new pipelines
@jemillerbalt
Baltimore has always been a car city. We'll drive 5 minutes to get where we're going. Not sure if that's going to change. The bike and scooter people sometimes act like they own the streets, and this can create hazardous situations.
Maybe if we hadn’t let all but 1.5 of these commuter trains to Downtown Baltimore die, we’d have navigated the transition away from steel manufacturing to service jobs a little better
I think people seriously sleep on how transformative recreational water activities in Druid Lake and the Harbor would be.
Proximity to water is one of our defining features, but we’re usually limited to looking at it and walking around
This is from a 1974 study on a commuter rail network for the Baltimore region. Most of this right-of-way is still available (albeit the important parts in the clutches of
@CSX
)
Given the size and proximity of Philadelphia, you’d be shocked by how little Baltimoreans know or think about it. Almost everything I know about Philly is due to a proximate interest in public transportation and high school Model UN trips
There’s not enough mixed-use in Bolton Hill for my taste, but you’d be hard pressed to find a prettier neighborhood in just about any city in the country
Now at the Khyber Pass Pub on 2nd and Chestnut. Kitchen is open till 1! The Bouncer recommended the bbq shrimp po’boy. Haven’t gotten it yet, but the New Trail White Ale from Williamsport PA is great. (I like every single white ale on earth)
Manifesting the following:
Mayor - Brandon Scott
Council President - Zeke Cohen
D1 - Mark Parker
D3 - Ryan Dorsey
D6 - Steven Johnson
D8 - Paris Grey
D11 - Zac Blanchard
D12 - Jermaine Jones
Starting tomorrow, learn more about the relaunched Red Line! Attend an Open House meeting on 11/8 and 11/9 to hear about the project and provide feedback on early ideas and concepts. Check for locations and details. We hope to see you there!
#MDOTlistens
To give you a visual, here’s the Sun’s graph of each year’s homicide total over time. Look at how there was no typical summer acceleration in homicides last year. Then look at the sharp drop over the last month or so
Baltimore is currently on pace for 180 homicides this year, which would be the lowest total since 1977
There have been 9 homicides reported in the last 30 days, 2 in the last week (1 of which was the guy on University Parkway who stabbed his roommate)
Amazing if it lasts