On January 20th, the national spotlight was on Baltimore. The air in the city, despite freezing temperatures, may as well have been filled with electricity as the Baltimore Ravens pummeled the Houston Texans in the NFL playoffs — a possible trip to the Super Bowl felt within reach.
Micah Mysiuk was one of thousands cheering on the home team at M&T Bank Stadium that night. But Mysiuk’s brother was feeling a bit under the weather so the pair decided to head home early.
Mysiuk pulled out his Transit app to check when the next bus would be heading down to Brooklyn, one of the city’s most southern neighborhoods, where he lives.
Nothing.
All buses were canceled for the night.
His brother, who lives in Rosedale, was able to get on the metro to head home. Mysiuk checked the app again. Still nothing.
So he began to walk towards Wells Street, deep in Riverside, hoping service would resume.
“I waited like 30 minutes here,” said Mysiuk, motioning to the bus stop near Hanover and East Wells Streets. “Then I saw families with children making this turn and going that way so I was like, ‘I guess I'm walking.’”
He began the trek down Hanover Street to Brooklyn. A four-lane highway that goes underneath I-95 and crosses both the Middle and Patapsco Rivers. It’s a route so hostile to pedestrians that Google Maps won’t allow it as a walking option.
Only two buses connect Brooklyn and Curtis Bay to the rest of the city; the 67 and Silver. While a complete shutdown is rare, January’s incident was a reminder how limited the area is in terms of transportation options — especially considering the fact that water cuts them off from most of the city.
About 30% of households in Brooklyn and Curtis Bay do not have a car — which is right around the city average, according to data from the Baltimore Neighborhoods Indicators Alliance. Car ownership can be seen as a burden for some residents in the area where about 33% of the community and 50% of children are living below the state’s poverty line.
“When you're relying on transit, that generally means you don't have the funds for that emergency Uber ride if you're taking the bus every day and dependent on the bus every day,” said Mysiuk.
“None of this was shoveled or plowed,” Mysiuk gestured to the sidewalks. That night was after a snowstorm and bitterly cold, with temperatures that felt like they were in the single digits (the coldest on record so far in 2024). He recalled trying to follow in the literal footsteps of the people in front of him, all the while trying to maintain balance in the deep snow as cars whizzed past.
Mysiuk eventually made it home safely and bus service resumed later that night. And Maryland Transit Administrator Holly Arnold will be the first to admit that January 20th was a difficult night.
“Unfortunately, that night, we did have a lot of call offs. And there were multiple cuts in a row on the Silver and the 67,” she said.
A driver shortage has affected the MTA and transit across the country. The MTA has been aggressively hiring and Arnold said they’re at about a one percent vacancy rate for drivers.
“We have been hiring more operators, and we have increased our wages, we've decreased the time that it takes to get to the top rate with our union partners, and [we] have been really successful in bringing on more operators, we've also doubled the amount of training classes that we have,” she said.
Even with more operators, Arnold said it’s not as simple as just moving drivers on to a new route when there’s a shortage. Drivers are trained on their routes and union employees are guaranteed routes in their contracts.
The MTA is also looking at a steep budget shortfall that’s under debate right now in Annapolis.
With limited options, neighborhood groups are doing what they can to increase local mobility by exploring other options.
Meredith Chaiken heads the Greater Baybrook Alliance, a community group in Brooklyn, Curtis Bay, and Brooklyn Park.
“We are trying to develop a bike path, a bike-pedestrian path to increase access here and make it safer for people who are walking or taking a bike around. And we also are thinking about ways to impact the truck traffic in the area to make it safer for pedestrians,” said Chaiken.
Part of that includes partnering with other groups to ensure residents can get to places they need to go.
“We have a really close relationship with MedStar Harbor Hospital, they're our partner in developing this bike and pedestrian trail, and it will access Harbor hospital,” she said. “One of the things that we hear from them is that people don't go to their doctor's appointments, like preventive care is hurt by lack of transit.”
And while those projects are important for the community, Chaiken notes that it's no substitute for accessible and reliable public transportation.
That hospital is less than two miles from the heart of Brooklyn but is nearly inaccessible by foot as much of Hanover Street due to a lack of sidewalk infrastructure.
The situation is far from unique. A recent survey from Johns Hopkins 21st Century Cities Initiative found that one in five Baltimore area residents needed to “at least sometimes… reschedule an appointment, skipped going somewhere” or were otherwise inconvenienced by transportation in a 30 day window. That number jumped higher for Black residents, where about 43% of Black Baltimore area residents identified feeling some type of transportation insecurity.
City Councilwoman Phylicia Porter, whose District 10 includes Brooklyn and Curtis Bay, said other options need to be on the table when it comes to creating more transit equity across the city.
She mentioned e-scooters, bike trails and the expansion of the Charm City Circulator, a free city-run bus that currently only connects a handful of predominantly high-income neighborhoods to downtown and tourist destinations at Inner Harbor. Porter has been working to get the circulator expanded into Cherry Hill, where the buses depot, and where only about 50% of residents own a car. But if that is successful, Porter said she’d like to see the line come even further south.
“We have a thriving business community down in Brooklyn and Curtis Bay, even into our Lakeland areas, that would definitely benefit from this type of expansion,” said Porter.
In 2022, the city was making plans to extend the service into Cherry Hill while also cutting off parts of the Banner route that provides service to Federal Hill and Fort McHenry. At the time, Senate President Bill Ferguson (D) threatened to withhold federal funds for the project if those cuts were made. A spokesperson from Ferguson’s office confirmed that the Senate President still supports an expansion of the circulator into Cherry Hill but still wishes to see the Banner route preserved.
The city’s Department of Transportation declined to answer questions about the timeline of that expansion.
“It really boils down to equitable distribution of transit resources, and really who needs it,” said Porter to WYPR. “Because without transportation… you can't get to your place of employment, you can't get to your hospital or primary care provider, you can't get to a fresh food option. You can't even get home.”
