Central Maryland Transportation Alliance is an advocacy group working to improve and expand transportation options in the Baltimore region. Using data and storytelling, CMTA has forefronted how unreliability and breakdown issues on buses and trains have negatively impacted workers and students throughout the region. In this episode, I interview Brian O’Malley, President & CEO at CMTA, to discuss how his organization built a winning coalition to secure state funding for the state of good repair needs of Baltimore’s transit system to address the breakdowns. Their advocacy led to the passage of the Transit Safety and Investment Act in 2021, which requires the state of Maryland to provide minimum annual funding for maintenance of the system. CMTA’s efforts demonstrate the power of organizing legislators and community groups to challenge the entrenched political prioritization of car infrastructure in transportation funding.
Central Maryland Transportation Alliance is an advocacy group working to improve and expand transportation options in the Baltimore region. Using data and storytelling, CMTA has forefronted how unreliability and breakdown issues on buses and trains have negatively impacted workers and students throughout the region.
In this episode, I interview Brian O’Malley, President & CEO at CMTA, to discuss how his organization built a winning coalition to secure state funding for the state of good repair needs of Baltimore’s transit system to address the breakdowns. Their advocacy led to the passage of the Transit Safety and Investment Act in 2021, which requires the state of Maryland to provide minimum annual funding for maintenance of the system. CMTA’s efforts demonstrate the power of organizing legislators and community groups to challenge the entrenched political prioritization of car infrastructure in transportation funding.
“It was compelling when we were able to find data that said that our light rail breaks down the most in the country. That helped us win bipartisan support because legislators view themselves as stewards of taxpayer dollars and public assets and didn't like it one bit that we had let this asset fall into such disrepair that it was breaking down more than any similar system in the country.” - Brian O’Malley
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Hosted by Kapish Singla
Edited by Kapish Singla
Produced by TransitCenter
Music: “Comma” - Blue Dot Sessions
Disclaimer: Political views raised by guests on the podcast do not reflect the views of TransitCenter.
Kapish Singla [00:00:01] From TransitCenter, I'm Kapish Singla. This is High Frequency. In Season Three of High Frequency, we're featuring stories of advocates who have shifted the transit agenda in their cities towards projects that better reflect rider priorities. Transportation dollars at all levels of government are disproportionately spent on highways and car infrastructure rather than public transit. And one really significant way that transit is underfunded is through a lack of state of good repair or SGR funding. Broadly, SGR refers to the upkeep required to maintain the physical assets of any transit system like tracks and signals, and the lack of upkeep can have dire consequences resulting in fires, breakdowns and outages. Baltimore has struggled with state of good repair, and many of the city's recent transit issues stem from former Governor Larry Hogan, who, during his tenure willfully neglected both public transit and Baltimore while lavishing funds to expand highways in wealthier parts of the state. His neglect came to a head in 2018 when Baltimore's Metro subway link system shut down for a month after authorities determined that the tracks had deteriorated. Enter Central Maryland Transportation Alliance, an advocacy group working to improve and expand transportation options in the Baltimore region. Over several years, CMTA built a diverse coalition that won legislation called the Transit Safety and Investment Act, which mandates the state dedicate consistent funding to Maryland MTA's state of good repair needs. To learn more about how the CMTA won this commitment and how other advocates can successfully push for more transit funding at the state level, I spoke with the organization's President and CEO, Brian O'Malley.
Kapish Singla [00:01:57] Brian, transportation funding across the state, including for Baltimore's transit system, are set by Maryland's governor. From 2015 to 2023, that was Governor Larry Hogan. What was his approach on transportation?
Brian O'Malley [00:02:12] We had his first MDOT secretary, Pete Rahn, as a guest to the board of directors for our nonprofit. He said there will be a shift to roads, meaning the Governor is prioritizing investment in road capacity. The governor talks a lot about traffic and sells the idea that we can pave our way out of traffic. That doesn't ever work, but that's an idea that he believes and budgets accordingly.
Kapish Singla [00:02:37] And how is transit in Baltimore affected by this agenda?
Brian O'Malley [00:02:42] Transit in Baltimore had years of underfunding. The Federal Transit Administration has something called the National Transit Database, and there's reports in there of breakdowns per 100,000 miles of service. And what we saw was that the light rail in Baltimore breaks down more than any light rail in the country. And the heavy rail Metro subway breaks down more than any heavy rail system in the country. And our buses break down eighth most. We break down a lot. And that seemed to get worse during Governor Hogan's tenure.
Kapish Singla [00:03:21] Why are these breakdowns and unreliability problems a big issue for transit riders?
Brian O'Malley [00:03:27] When you can't count on your bus to arrive, you know, you start having to either be late to things or budget in lots of extra time. There was a story not that long ago about workers at an Amazon facility in southeast Baltimore who hang out outside the building before their shift because they take an extra early bus just in case a bus doesn't show up or is late because there's a penalty for being late to your shift. And so then they just sort of hang around until their shift starts. Another way that the reliability problems affect riders lives are in schools. Our partners at the Fund for Educational Excellence interviewed over 100 Baltimore City school students for a report called "Not In Service," and that was about their experience getting to and from school using the Maryland Transit Administration. And we heard over and over again that kids have trouble getting to school reliably. And principals and teachers have said that the first period is often full of disruptions because they'll be 20 minutes into class and then the whole group of kids will arrive and the voice will come over the intercom and say, you know, "Please allow these students the bus just arrived, it was running late" or something. And that's a regular occurrence and very disruptive.
Kapish Singla [00:04:52] The breakdowns and the unreliability problems indicate that there are issues with state of good repair. Brian, how big is the maintenance backlog?
Brian O'Malley [00:05:00] We didn't used to know how big the maintenance backlog was. And we saw in 2018 there was a big push to provide dedicated funding for the capital needs of WMATA, the Washington metro system. And we noticed that the business community and the advocates were all citing the same dollar figure for what they needed. And we wondered: how is everyone on the same page? And we found out that they had a document called the Capital Needs Inventory, where they took stock of every capital asset in the WMATA system - every train car, every bus, every train platform and section of track and so forth, and noted what would it cost to bring things that aren't in a state of good repair into a state of good repair? And so there was a bill for Maryland government to provide dedicated funding to WMATA in perpetuity. And we encouraged the Baltimore region legislators to support that, but to ask for some things for the Baltimore system. And one of the things we encouraged them to ask for was a mandate from the MTA to do a capital needs inventory. And so they did that. It came out a year later in July of 2019, and the dollar figure was a $2 billion gap over the next ten years. And when their draft budget came out, instead of funding enough to start reducing that backlog of good repair, they were underfunding so that the backlog was going to continue to get bigger. And that's when we went to the legislature.
Kapish Singla [00:06:37] How were you working with the legislature? What came next?
Brian O'Malley [00:06:40] What came out of it was a bill called the Transit Safety and Investment Act that mandated minimum amounts of funding over seven years. You know, this isn't anything for building a new line or running buses more frequently. This was just to run the service that we currently have, we have to fund enough that the backlog of state of good repair needs starts to get smaller over time.
Kapish Singla [00:07:07] What was the legislative lifecycle of that act?
Brian O'Malley [00:07:10] That was first proposed in 2020 in the legislative session, which in Maryland runs from January to April. Of course, you all remember what happened in February and March of 2020. We had the COVID 19 pandemic. And so for the first time in history, Maryland's General Assembly cut its legislative session short. So we had to come back the next year. But something important happened in the intervening months. In September of 2020, the Maryland Department of Transportation proposed permanently eliminating over 20 bus routes in the Baltimore area. We were very upset about that, and we found out that we weren't the only ones. Riders were very concerned. The Hospitals Association was very concerned because the workforce uses transit quite a bit and the hospitals were saying we can't function if if these buses aren't running. And so we took some threads of two existing coalitions and kind of wove them together into a stronger rope and made a coalition that started meeting regularly in September of 2020. At the same time, we were analyzing what happened with the CARES Act money that Congress had sent to keep transit running. And it turns out they did what they were supposed to do. They spent it on the Maryland Transit Administration. The problem was they disproportionately cut state funding for the MTA, so much so that it canceled out the aid that Congress was sending. So we wrote a letter to Governor Hogan calling that out and saying that wasn't acceptable to receive aid from Congress, to keep transit running and then permanently eliminate 20 bus routes that people are depending on. So we were working on different angles and different fronts. Luckily, MDOT canceled the proposal to eliminate the bus routes and that was energizing for our coalition. And the coalition said, "Well, now that we've saved Maryland transit, let's stabilize it and let's get behind this Transit Safety and Investment Act and say we have to invest at least the bare minimum in state of good repair needs." So when we came back for the 2021 legislative session, we had a bigger coalition behind the bill.
Kapish Singla [00:09:26] And how did CMTA stay active on this legislation throughout the calendar year 2021?
Brian O'Malley [00:09:34] We have an organizer, Danielle Sweeney, who talks to writers and gets their stories. And when there's opportunities for those who want to to share their stories with a larger audience, she tries to connect them. So we were constantly trying to remind anyone watching or listening of the human element of what it means to people and what it means to their lives if they can't rely on the bus or the train to be on time. We also organized people to testify at the bill hearings. We did a rally with the sponsors. And that session 2021 - it got through both chambers with veto proof majorities and bipartisan support. Unfortunately, Governor Hogan vetoed it. But there was a special session that the General Assembly called in December of 2021, and they override the veto. And so the bill became law.
Kapish Singla [00:10:27] What were the ingredients for success for this advocacy campaign?
Brian O'Malley [00:10:32] The Central Maryland Transportation Alliance tries to both do analysis and reports and grassroots organizing and mobilizing people, and it was really important to lift up the voices of riders saying reliability is a problem. But I think it was compelling when we were able to find the data that said that our light rail breaks down the most in the country. And I think that helped us win bipartisan support because I think legislators view themselves as stewards of taxpayer dollars and public assets and didn't like that one bit that we had let this asset fall into such disrepair that it was breaking down more than any similar system in the country. So I think being able to do data analysis and issue reports and mobilize people to talk and share their stories were both necessary and both essential to this campaign.
Kapish Singla [00:11:29] And what does this whole ordeal reveal about governance issues for Baltimore's transit system?
Brian O'Malley [00:11:39] The Maryland Transit Administration, which runs the buses and trains in Greater Baltimore, is an administration under state government and it doesn't have a board, so it's only answerable to the governor. And of the 50 largest transit agencies in the country, Baltimore's MTA is the only one that's set up like that. There are some that are somehow connected to state government, but they have boards and at least some local control. And Baltimore's MTA has no local control. So that showed up with this chronic underfunding of maintenance and state of good repair needs. But it shows up in other ways, too. And one notable example of that is the Baltimore Red Line, which was a planned East-West light rail project. There was about 12 years of public meetings and environmental studies and applying for federal funding to have it ready for construction in 2015. But Governor Hogan was elected in fall of 2014 and had run being skeptical of large transit investments. And in June of 2015, he canceled the project. The Baltimore mayor had no say in that. The Baltimore County Executive had no saying in it. It was a unilateral decision made by the governor. And those two examples, the lack of state of good repair funding and the cancellation of a major project point to the lack of local control and have led a lot of people to call for reform. There's a push now to create a Baltimore Regional Transportation Authority to govern public transportation in the greater Baltimore region.
Kapish Singla [00:13:26] Finally, Brian, what happened in Maryland is not a unique dynamic. Many governors and other states have a broad authority on transportation priorities. That's often meant that a high percentage of the budget is spent on highway and road expansion, while transit systems receive a minuscule percent and subsequently fall apart. What advice do you have for advocates in other places as they wage campaigns for a our maintenance and operations funding to sustain their transit systems?
Brian O'Malley [00:13:54] When you neglect your state of good repair, it takes years to dig yourself out. Our former MDOT secretary, Greg Slater, said in the hearing that system preservation essentially means pay now or pay more later. We need to be as advocates arguing for both the today, like the reliability problems, but also planning for our future. And this is going to get more expensive the more we neglect it. So I would point that out. Another lesson we have learned many times and still continue to learn is it's a tendency to leave the voices of riders out of these conversations. And I think it's an important role for advocates to help riders speak up and share their stories. So we try to proactively talk to reporters and say, "We just talked to so-and-so last week and they've had trouble being late to their medical appointments. Wouldn't that be a good story to share in your reporting?" So those kinds of things. Also helping riders testify when there's hearings or rallies for policy changes.
Kapish Singla [00:15:05] Thank you for your time, Brian.
Brian O'Malley [00:15:08] Thank you, Kapish. It's an honor to be on with, you know, some of the other people that have been on the program. It's an amazing lineup. So I was thrilled to be asked.
Kapish Singla [00:15:18] That's all for today's episode. I'm your host and editor, Kapish Singla. High Frequency will be taking a pause. Please make sure you subscribed to the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever else you get podcasts to be alerted to our return. High Frequency is a TransitCenter production. Follow us on Twitter at TransitCenter or visit us online at TransitCenter dot org.