Episode 9 - From Education to NUMTOT (with Jerome Horne)

Now arriving at Baltimore Penn Station with connections to Amtrak, Light Rail Link, City Link Green, City Link Silver, and Local Link.

I think it'd be cool to start with Jerome first to hear about something different first.

Yeah, tell us your news item.

Yeah, sure.

So in local conversation in Baltimore, we recently had a there was a proposal that was put down by the Boring Company.

Yes, that Boring Company from that man who shall not be mentioned to build a tunnel underneath Baltimore from our Baltimore Ravens American football stadium through our inner harbor to some other really cool neighborhoods, Harbor East, Fells Point.

for game day connectivity.

Now, how serious this proposal was, we're not really sure whether or not it was intended to be Tesla's in a tunnel or pedestrian tunnel.

There was a lot of back and forth about that, but it made the local paper and sparked quite a bit of discussion and just trying to get people to understand the realities of space and geometry and why Tesla's in a tunnel are probably not the best use of not the best way to move people and not the best use of limited resources and trains and buses, right, are still superior for moving lots of people in our city.

So, you know, really interesting that that was revealed, that we probably kind of found out about this after the fact, but it is definitely not going to move forward.

But, you know, just interesting that Baltimore was picked as a finalist by the Boring Company for consideration of such a project.

I don't know how you can look at what's going on in Las Vegas with the existing Boring Company tunnels and think, oh, yeah, I want that in my community.

That solves a problem I have because it just seems like it's slow, it's labor intensive, it's expensive, and it's low capacity.

What could it possibly solve?

yeah, especially the whole, like it ruins the whole point, like the whole like choke point of like the entrance and exit of it all.

Like even, I think it kind of reminds me of like, I mean, just like a highway in general in Toronto, we have this expressway called the Allen expressway and it was supposed to be this longer highway that connected multiple highways together and was supposed to go through downtown.

But yeah, Jane Jacobs was actually one of the people who helped stop this Spadina Expressway and also many other residents and community groups, including Chinatown as well.

But so now it's just this like half built highway that's just like a stub.

And I swear it creates more traffic than it solves because it just like suddenly ends at a random like intersection.

of major arterial just dumps everyone out and it always backs up and there's actually a motion a council or to like study like how do we actually kind of fix the kind of traffic mess at the end of this highway and a lot of i don't think re-timing it or redoing the intersection or anything will really fix it like and one of the options is just shut down the whole highway and turn into something else and that might be the way to go.

But yeah, Jerome, like what, why, why do you think Maryland was kind of chosen as a finalist for this? And like, is, is I'm assuming there's like a lot of demand between this like sports stadium and like other parts of Baltimore.

And are there like any like plans, like existing bus services or any way to make that better instead of a kind of, you know, car tunnel plan?

Yeah, you know, I can't really speak to why we were chosen as a finalist.

I think this was a negotiation and a deal between the football team and the boring company.

But, you know, to your point, clearly this is not the best way, especially on game days where we have tens of thousands of people descending and leaving at the same times.