A view of the remains of the Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26, the day it was struck by the Dali shortly after it left the Port of Baltimore. Screenshot from National Transportation Safety Board video.
In any other year, the announcement by Gov. Wes Moore (D) that the state was reviving plans for the Red Line light rail in Baltimore, reversing his predecessor’s decision to kill the project, might have been the transportation story of the year.
But 2025 was far from any other year in transportation news in Maryland.
The news was dominated by the shocking crash and collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge that killed six, threatened to throttle the state’s economy by shutting down the Port of Baltimore and sparked a rush for funding, from lawsuits and from the federal government.
That scramble for funding comes as the state is looking at a $1.3 billion gap between projects in the six-year Consolidated Transportation Program and the money in the faltering Transportation Trust Fund that is expected to be available to pay for them.
And the long-simmering challenge with transportation funding poses a dilemma for business and legislative leaders, who say the key to jump-starting Maryland’s lethargic economy is to bolster the state’s road and transit networks. But there is little money for the big items on the state’s wish list — items that include not just a Red Line, but an expanded American Legion Bridge and new Chesapeake Bay spans.
All of those challenges will continue into 2025, and likely beyond.
Fall and rise of the Francis Scott Key Bridge
The collapse of the Key Bridge was the biggest story in Maryland in 2024.
The 1.6-mile span fell into the Patapsco River after a massive cargo ship, the Dali, lost power and hit a support structure in the early morning hours of March 26. Six construction workers, all immigrants, were killed — Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, Carlos Daniel Hernandez Estrella, Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, Miguel Angel Luna Gonzalez, José Mynor López, and Maynor Yasir Suazo-Sandoval.
In the hours that immediately followed the bridge collapse, President Joe Biden promised the federal government would foot the costs of a rebuild. Moore vowed to help the families of those killed in the collapse, open the shipping channel to the Port of Baltimore that was closed for months by bridge debris, and provide financial assistance to workers and businesses hurt by the collapse.
It took until earlier this month, but they got it done.
The General Assembly, which was still in session at the time of the crash, quickly approved emergency funds for businesses and workers affected by the bridge collapse. By early June, federal, state and private crews had freed the Dali and cleared thousands of tons of debris from the river to reopen the port. And by August, the state had awarded a contract for the first phase of redesign and planning.
Finally, in the early morning hours of Dec. 21, the U.S. Senate gave final approval to a stopgap budget that included a promise of full federal funding to replace the bridge — two days after that deal was almost scuttled by President-elect Donald Trump and House Republicans who objected to Democratic spending included in the first version of the budget bill.
Speaking at the Dec. 18 Board of Public Works meeting — before the House GOP temporarily blocked the stopgap bill — Moore said the hoped-for federal funding would let the state “accomplish all four of the objectives that we laid out that morning, that while that tragedy occurred on our time, the rebuild will be done on our watch.”
“What the continuing resolution helps to say is that with this 100% cost share, we are now going to begin the process of making sure that on time and on budget, we are going to rebuild the bridge,” he said.
While the funding was briefly thrown back into question, the eventual securing of federal support is far from the end of the story. The state has just started the process of planning for a new bridge that will be higher and with a wider shipping lane to allow more room for larger ships, all while being restricted to the current footprint of the bridge to reduce time for enviromental review. Even at that, the most optimistic estimates are that a new Key Bridge will not open until 2028 at a cost of up to $1.9 billion.
Transportation Trust fund a ‘broken’ model
Prior to the collapse of the Key Bridge, the top transportation story in Maryland was a $3.1 billion gap between the road and transit projects in the six-year Consolidated Transportation Program and the projected revenues in the state’s Transportation Trust Fund.
The news followed an interim report last year by a blue ribbon panel known as the Transportation Revenue and Infrastructure Needs Commission. The TRAIN Commission said the state’s gas tax, the primary source of transportation funding, will not be able to keep pace with inflation and basic maintenance of existing road and transit projects.
“How we continue to have a TTF and having a way we’re funding transportation based on something that repeatedly declines in revenue, i.e. a gas tax, makes absolutely no sense,” Moore said before Christmas. “The business model is broken and needs to be fixed.”
As a result of that report, the legislature increased vehicle registration fees and imposed a surcharge on electric vehicles, which had not been paying into the Transportation Trust Fund since they do not buy gas.
The TRAIN Commission was to deliver a final set of recommendations on modernizing the fund by the end of this year, but the panel was the victim of budget squabbles between the House and Senate. The compromise called for the 31-member panel to be replaced by a smaller commission and an advisory panel — but the members were never announced publicly and the groups have not met.
Lawmakers will still face a gap between projects in the transportation spending plan and the money projected to be available over the next six years. That gap is now about $1.3 billion. Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore) said it might be time to lower expectations on transportation, at least for now.
“This is one of those situations where it’s impossible to do all things,” Ferguson told reporters in late December. “What I think we need to do when it comes to transportation is very much focused on the state of good repair.”
Besides a state funding shortfall, officials wonder about the likelihood of federal funding under a GOP-controlled Congress and White House.
“And so as that uncertainty exists, I think it’s absolutely critical that the Department of Transportation in Maryland focus on maintenance and the state of good repair for all of our modes,” Ferguson said.
Baltimore’s Red Line
The vision of a light rail transit line opening up jobs on Baltimore’s east side to workers on the west remains a promise.
And a logo.
And even the most optimistic supporters of the resurrected Red Line acknowledge the project is unlikely at this time.
Moore resurrected the project in 2023, months after being sworn into office. Eight years earlier, then-Gov. Larry Hogan (R) canceled the Red Line as a financial “boondoggle.” The projected cost in 2014 was $2.9 billion — though many expected it could be more costly due to tunneling needed through parts of Baltimore City.
Moore estimates that building the line would result in 5,000 jobs and $10 billion in economic activity in the state. The project is billed as key to reversing the Baltimore economy, connecting workers to jobs.
The new cost of the project — $4.7 billion to $9 billion if tunneling is needed — will require federal aid that Moore and state officials hoped would be forthcoming under a Biden administration. But Biden is only in office for another three weeks until President-elect Donald Trump — much less friendly to mass transit than Biden — will be sworn in.
“I think that the administration is taking a close look at the likelihood of federal funding,” Ferguson said. “What I do know is that the last time the Trump administration had an approach for the federal transportation agency, there was not a single project that moved forward in the project category that the Red Line currently exists within. And so I think we have to be realistic that it is unlikely.”
While Ferguson acknowledged the situation” got a lot harder,” he would not give up hope.
“We’ve got work to do, and we can’t just give up on everything. We can’t just say it’s all dead, it’s not going to happen,” he said. “I’m more hopeful than that. I’m an optimist.
“Yes, there are some major headwinds. There are huge challenges ahead, but we just got to keep going…. I’m not giving up on anything until there’s no, no possible chance,” Ferguson said.
But even if the Trump administration was disposed to spending billions on Baltimore transit, Maryland would still have to come up with its share of the costs. Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld said in June that 50% of the cost would be borne by the state and local government, although he had not ruled out the potential for private investment.
When asked if the state could pony up its share, Ferguson said, “At the moment, no…. If the case were that it moved forward, we would have to have very real conversations about how we are going to change our transportation expenditures or raise money to develop the plan.”
The Purple Line
While Hogan canceled the Red Line, he allowed the Purple Line to continue.
In 2015, the project was expected to take four years to complete at a cost of $5.6 billion. But cost overruns and delays — some caused by the pandemic — have stymied the project, a 16.2-mile, 21-stop line connecting the New Carrollton Metro station in Prince George’s County to the Bethesda Metro station in Montgomery County.
For Moore, this is the “boondoggle,” but one he said he plans to see through.
“You cannot talk about something that has now gone on over a decade longer than expected, over a billion dollars overrun, and know that that was something that we inherited,” Moore said at the Dec. 18 Board of Public Works meeting, “but know that it is something that we have said that in our time we’re going to fix and we have to get it done.”
The MTA has seven light rail cars at its facilities. Test runs are expected to start early next year on the Purple Line, which is currently not expected to be complete until late 2027.
But problems with the line and its costs have caused frustration for state officials.
Comptroller Brooke Lierman (D) said she was “gravely concerned about MDOT’s present ability to accurately forecast its funding needs and future expenses and the resulting impact on transit services throughout the state.”