Bus Photo of the Month: November 2024

Posted on November 2, 2024 by Oren

New Flyer XDE40 13013

Location: Charles Street at Fayette Street, Baltimore, MD
Operator of Vehicle: MDOT MTA
Date of Photo: November 25, 2018

This Tuesday is Election Day in the United States, and many transit systems will be offering free rides in order to facilitate getting to polling places so constituents can cast their votes. I’ve seen notices of various agencies providing fare free travel on Election Day in recent years, including Minneapolis in 2014. Other systems that I am aware of providing fare free travel on Election Day include Ride On, the Minnesota Valley Transit Authority, LA Metro, CapMetro, Knoxville Area Transit, Denver RTD, and the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority.

Are you aware of other US transit systems that are offering free transit on Election Day? Does this practice exist in other countries? Leave a comment if you know the answer to either question.

For more photos of MDOT MTA Core Bus Services, please click here.

Rail Photo of the Month: April 2022

Posted on April 2, 2022 by Oren

ABB LRV 5043

Location: Camden Station, Baltimore, MD
Operator of Vehicle: MDOT MTA
Date of Photo: June 16, 2009

On this date in 1992, the Baltimore Light Rail began revenue operations. The line’s initial segment operated from Timonium to Camden Yards, adjacent to the Orioles new stadium that opened the same day. Maryland Governor William Donald Schaefer advocated for the construction of the line in order to facilitate travel to the new ballpark. The line was constructed without federal funding, which is a rarity for US rapid transit construction, using the right of way previously used by several interurban streetcar and commuter rail routes, the Northern Central Railway, Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Electric Railway and Baltimore and Annapolis Railroad. Service was extended such that by 1997, the system reached its current extent, operating as far north as Hunt Valley and as far south as BWI Airport and Glen Burnie. There is also a short spur line to Baltimore Penn Station.

Initially, much of the line outside of downtown was single track in order to save money during construction. This limited service to 17 minute frequencies, so the line was closed down in portions in order to double track it between 2004 and 2006. The original rolling stock still operates on the line, though it received a mid-life overhaul in the mid-2010s. Also in 2017, the system was rebranded “Light RailLink” in conjunction with the BaltimoreLink bus network redesign.

For more photos of the Baltimore Light Rail, please click here.

Enough Teases, Here’s What’s New and Updated for the Start of 2021!

Posted on February 1, 2021 by Oren

Anyone who knows where I’ve traveled or has visited the site with some frequency over the years may have noticed that the Bus Photo of the Month for January 2021 was from a city that had not been included on Oren’s Transit Page before, and that I’ve been highlighting a number of new website sections over the past few weeks.

The biggest and most noteworthy additions are the brand new sections for Baltimore, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and Austin. As I noted in a recent post, there was a certain amount of irony to the fact I grew up 40 miles from Baltimore and am an avid Orioles fan, yet the city had not been featured on this site until recently. Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and Austin were destinations that I traveled to in late 2019 and early 2020 before the Covid-19 pandemic, and I am thankful to have had the opportunity to make those trips when I did.

I also took advantage of some time I had recently to move some photos that had been on the Uncaptioned Photos page for quite awhile and put them in more appropriate places on the website, most notably, the photos of the Pikes Peak Cog Railway now have their own page. Perhaps you found the new material on your own, but if not, here is the full listing of where new photos were recently added to the site, with new sections highlighted in bold and italics.

United States

OTP is Finally Linked to Baltimore

Posted on January 4, 2021 by Oren

With nearly 1,600 photos from the Washington, DC area, you would think this website might have had a Baltimore section by now, since the two cities are only about 40 miles apart and I grew up just outside DC. In fact, there are more photos on this website from the Washington, DC area than anywhere other than Israel. Yet until now, there was no Baltimore section on this site.

There are several reasons for this that I can think of. The first one is that typically, I’ve gone to Baltimore for Orioles games, and while one can take public transit to get to the ballpark from DC for weeknight games, there is no great public transit option to get back home. This is also the case on weekends for both directions of travel. And while traffic on Interstate 95 between the two cities can be abysmal at rush hour, one can get from Baltimore to the close-in DC suburbs in under an hour once the game is over on a weeknight or anytime on a weekend. In other words, it makes sense to drive.

Another reason is that aside from the Orioles (remember that DC did not have a baseball team from 1972 until the start of the 2005 season), I never had much of a reason to go to Baltimore. I suppose I could have made a point of going there to check out the trains and buses, but could also just stay closer to home and explore in Montgomery County, Northern Virginia, or DC itself.

This isn’t to say I never rode on Baltimore transit until recently. I took the light rail once in 1999, caught a bus once to get to where the car was parked after a deluge caused an Orioles game I was at to be postponed, and I had been on MARC a handful of times. However, one must also consider the fact that the Metro Subway did not provide Sunday service until September 2, 2001, and the light rail only operates from 11 AM to 7 PM on Sundays to this day, so in some ways the opportunities to ride these modes was limited by their hours of operation.

Recently, I’ve had more occasions to be in Baltimore, and finally had the chance to explore the Metro Subway in November 2018. After that, I felt that there were enough photos from the Baltimore area that it finally made sense to post those, as well as any other random Baltimore transit pictures I happened to have from the past (I found some, there might be more hiding in an archive of an old hard drive I have yet to uncover).

So now there are a total of 50 photos of transit in the Baltimore area, including the core bus service, Metro SubwayLink, and Light RailLink. Yes, it is only a fraction of what I have in the DC section, and there are cities I’ve spent far less time in that have larger sections on this website, but it seems fitting that considering where I grew up and that I do find myself in Baltimore not infrequently, there is finally a place for its transit photos to be featured on my site.

A selection of highlights from the Baltimore section can be seen below, or you can see all the photo galleries by clicking here.