Maryland’s Senate Budget and Taxation and House Appropriations Committees heard a joint briefing on transit and roadway plans from the Department of Legislative Services and Maryland’s Transportation Secretary Pete Rahn yesterday in Annapolis. While the overall presentation was broadly covering the numerous changes to the overall spending plan for transportation projects, much of the legislators’ attention was on the changes to major transit lines announced recently.

The Department of Legislative Services described the Red Line’s cancellation by Governor Hogan, and listed the major closeout activities that needed to take place to cancel the project, and stated the fiscal effects of the cancellation including:

Cancelation of the Red Line frees up $736 million in State funding programmed in the current Consolidated Transportation Program (CTP) for fiscal 2016 through 2020. This funding will be reprogrammed in the draft CTP to be released in September 2015.

As reported in the Baltimore Sun, in response to several questions of concern about the cancellation of the Baltimore region’s Red Line,

. . .Transportation Secretary Pete Rahn pledged to work with legislators and other Baltimore leaders to improve transit services he conceded were unacceptable, but he said those efforts would have to rely largely on existing resources.

Rahn said the $736 million the state will save over the next six years by canceling the Baltimore light rail line, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars shaved from the Washington area’s Purple Line project, are going toward achieving the Republican governor’s “vision” for Maryland’s transportation future.

Secretary Rahn stated that savings from the Red Line’s cancellation and reductions in the cost of the Purple Line project have been committed to roads, according to the Sun.

For more information, read the power point from the Department of Legislative Services and the full story from the Baltimore Sun.