A joint report on the Maryland Department of Transportation’s FY2027–2032 Draft Consolidated Transportation Program.
We read Maryland’s capital transportation budget. Baltimore transit is coming up short.
No Construction Money For The Red Line
Governor Moore relaunched Baltimore’s first transit line investment in 30 years, then wrote a budget with no money to build it.
A $362.7 million cut to Baltimore transit
Despite Baltimore advocates, elected officials, business leaders, and residents successfully advocating for more transportation revenues in 2024 and 2025, the draft Consolidated Transportation Program spends those new revenues entirely on highway widening and Washington region transit while Baltimore transit loses ground.
The draft CTP funds three highway widenings at 6.4 times the Red Line.
$605.3 million for US 15, I-97 and I-81.
$95.2 million for the Red Line.
The Maryland General Assembly passed new transportation revenue packages in 2024 and 2025.
The Transportation Trust Fund that pays for Maryland’s roads and transit has been running short. In 2024 and 2025, the Maryland General Assembly passed new revenue packages to address this shortfall and add new revenue. The packages provide more than $400 million a year in new state money, and nearly $700 million a year in total once federal funds are matched.
Approximate total once federal funds are matched.
The money did not reach Baltimore.
Since the General Assembly passed those revenue packages, MDOT added new highway widening projects. Baltimore region transit capital falls in every successive budget, while highway widening and other regions gain.
Compared to last year’s CTP, while Washington region transit investment grows.
Each budget's own six-year transit capital total. The third line is MARC commuter rail and statewide programs, which belong to neither region. The dotted line marks when the 2025 revenue package took effect. Percentages are each line’s share of all Maryland transit capital over that budget's six years.
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Washington’s six-year total dips once, then jumps to $5.04 billion in the draft.
Despite the revenue package passed by the General Assembly, Baltimore’s total share is lower each year after the revenue package.
Across the past 3 CTPs, Baltimore’s total falls $494 million. Washington’s rises $391 million. The rest goes to programs that serve neither region.
Baltimore now gets under a third of Maryland’s transit money, less than in either of the two prior budgets.
MDOT put new money toward highway widening.
MDOT opens the budget with a claim: “Safety is MDOT’s top priority.” But the CTP says otherwise. When MDOT received new revenue, it went to widening highways, not safety.
SHA’s major construction program, FY 2027–2032. Expansion outweighs safety here, 15 to 1.
The largest highway expansions the CTP funds
Each project’s total estimated cost, with the change since last year’s CTP in parentheses. This is each project’s full lifetime cost, not the six-year total cited above — the three widenings’ six-year funding is $605.3 million, 6.4 times the Red Line’s $95.2 million.
No construction money for the Red Line.
Maryland has already spent more than $300 million on the Red Line. The draft CTP records $63.1 million spent through FY2026 on the relaunched project, on top of what the state spent before the line was cancelled in 2015. Neither figure counts the value of the time people spent attending public meetings, completing surveys, and even traveling to other cities to see transit.
Despite MDOT’s pitch that a pivot to BRT for the Red Line would advance construction in as few as 3-5 years, this budget shows no shovels in the ground through 2032.
The draft CTP funds three highway widenings at 6.4 times the Red Line.
Six-year funding in the draft, FY 2027–2032. The three widenings together are 6.4 times the Red Line.
The plan, unfunded
A transit line perpetually in planning, with the bus network improvements and planning for other new transit lines unfunded alongside it, is not an accelerated project.
MTA warns that delay alone raises the cost: “If the start of construction was delayed five years, inflation alone would add $882 million in costs.”
MDOT cut the repairs that keep Baltimore’s transit running.
MDOT reduced 17 projects for what it wrote down as “fiscal capacity.” 11 of them are MTA projects. Only one is a highway project. The cuts cancel or delay the work that keeps a transit system usable: the elevators and escalators that reach the platform, the fare gates, the station repairs, the small state-of-good-repair program.
Largest changes inside Baltimore region transit, in millions of dollars, over FY2027–2031. Bars left of the line are cuts or deferrals; bars to the right are additions. Light Rail Modernization and Systems Overhauls are combined because MDOT reassigned funding between the two project lines in the draft CTP. Elevator & escalator rehabilitation’s total project cost is cut $164.8 million — this window captures only $34.5 million of it; the rest falls in years beyond FY2031.
The minor program, gutted
A 44% cut over six years to MTA’s minor program. The minor program is a large bucket of maintenance and safety projects that are individually too small to have their own project form, so it does not appear in the chart above.
While some of this may be completed projects coming off the books, the reduced funding means that the many other projects in the Capital Needs Inventory aren’t entering the pipeline at the same level of funding.
This is the largest CTP in history
MDTA toll roads appear in the CTP but are not included in the calculation tables. While these projects are toll-funded, they affect our bonding capacity and their planning and construction result in non-toll funded highway expansions like the I-97 project in this year’s CTP. When you include MDTA projects, the six-year total tops $30 billion, the largest capital program in state history. Auto-oriented spending increases, while transit spending remains flat.
Governor Moore says:
If this is going to be Maryland’s Decade, it has to be Baltimore’s Time.Governor’s April 2026 press conference on advancing Transit-Oriented Development in Baltimore.
Part of making that real means making sure our investments in Baltimore’s Metro and Light Rail System lead to opportunity.
Yet this Draft Puts transit last, and Baltimore Transit last of all
The Maryland General Assembly raised the revenues Baltimore advocates, elected officials, business leaders, and residents demanded. The draft CTP spends it widening highways and funding transit in the Washington region while Baltimore’s transit loses ground, its first new transit line in 30 years goes unbuilt, and the plan to improve bus service and advance other new transit lines goes unfunded.