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Transportation Planning Into The Future

Melissa Gerr

It’s challenging enough to rally public interest around making costly improvements to public transportation...let alone during a pandemic and in the middle of civil unrest. But the ‘Central Maryland Regional Transit Plan’timeline marches on, with a deadline hovering in the fall.

Holly Arnold, Deputy Administrator and Maryland Transit Administration’s Chief Planning, Programming and Engineering Officer, tells us what the plan entails. And transportation advocate Taffy Gwitira, vice chair of the public advisory committee of the Baltimore Regional Transportation Board of the Baltimore Metropolitan Council, talks about the equity of access to reliable transit that she feels is lacking in the plan. But she says one must play the long game when it comes to designing transportation around Baltimore.

To live chat with Central Maryland Regional Transit Plan project designers on Tuesday June 16, from 4-6 p.m., and also to leave your comments on the plan, visit this link.  

There are two options for joining the June RTP commission meeting: By computer/smartphone/tablet: Visit rtp.mta.maryland.gov/commission and you are encouraged you to join the meeting anytime after 8:30 a.m. to make sure you have time before the meeting starts to work through any technical issues. 

By phone: Call (408) 418-9388 and enter Access Code 713 207 356. Your mic will automatically be set to "Mute" but you will be able to hear all audio from the meeting. 

Accessible Draft Plan Documents The RTP Project Team has been collaborating with members of the disability community, including representatives from National Federation of the Blind, The Image Center, and Accessible Resources for Independence, to convert the draft Plan into a plain-text Word document as well as a fully accessible PDF for screen readers. You can download them directly from RTP Plan Documents section on the Resources page of the RTP website, in addition to the two-page RTP Overview, available in both English and Spanish.

Sheilah Kast is the host of On The Record, Monday-Friday, 9:30-10:00 am.
Melissa Gerr is a Senior Producer for On the Record. She started in public media at Twin Cities Public Television in St. Paul, Minn., where she is from, and then worked as a field producer for Oregon Public Broadcasting in Portland. She made the jump to audio-lover in Baltimore as a digital media editor at Mid-Atlantic Media and Laureate Education, Inc. and as a field producer for "Out of the Blocks." Her beat is typically the off-beat with an emphasis on science, culture and things that make you say, 'Wait, what?'