While equal employment opportunity is critical for achieving economic justice, the ability to travel to and from work is just as crucial. Inadequate transportation access is a major roadblock to job access for Black Americans and one that is often caused by discriminatory government action. This is the case in the cancellation of Baltimore’s Red Line light rail system. The cancellation of Baltimore’s Red Line light rail shows how vital transportation is for economic justice and how discriminatory policies harm Black communities.
LDF, along with the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center, Covington & Burling LLP, and the ACLU of Maryland, filed a complaint with the United States Department of Transportation on behalf of the Baltimore Regional Initiative Developing Genuine Equality, Inc. and Black residents of the State of Maryland. The complaint states that the cancellation of the Red Line violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits state agencies that engage in discrimination from receiving federal funds. Read the full complaint here. Read the report on the implications of the Red Line’s cancellation here.
Historically, eminent domain was routinely invoked to displace Black residents from residential areas in cities and surrounding suburbs to make room for highways and other roadworks. In the rare instances that relocation assistance was provided, Black people were often moved to overcrowded public housing in economically depressed areas, with fewer job prospects, less connectivity to vital commercial hubs, and where epidemic poverty created a perception of irremediable urban blight. Officials and policymakers often cast a blind eye to the disparate impact that these decisions had on the lives of Black Americans.
In particular, these decisions had a direct impact on the extent and quality of public transportation. Because of public transportation shortages and infrastructural weaknesses, many cities failed to create reliable public transportation systems that reached all areas of the city. Black communities were thus denied meaningful connection to areas where jobs were most plentiful.
Baltimore, riven by a history of racial disparities, is one glaring and troubling example. In June 2015, Maryland’s Governor Larry Hogan announced the cancellation of the Red Line, a planned east-west mass transit light rail. Instead, all state funding earmarked for the Red Line was redirected to a newly created Highways, Bridges and Roads Initiative, which focused largely on rural and suburban areas outside Baltimore. The Red Line would have cut Baltimoreans’ commuting time, increased their accessibility to job centers, and dramatically decongested traffic along highways and roads inside of and leading into the city.
Expert analysis, research and community interviews, as well as the state’s own analysis pointed to the disparate impact of Red Line’s cancellation on Black residents of Baltimore and the State of Maryland. In 2010, approximately 25% of Baltimore’s 620,961 Black residents — 63.7% of the city’s total population — relied on public transportation to travel to work, compared to only eight percent of whites. Since the 1970s, public transportation projects that would have benefited Black Baltimore residents and communities have been met with resistance by both white voters and government.
The state and federal governments had already spent almost $290 million on the Red Line project since planning began in 2001. Maryland forfeited $900 million in federal funds when it cancelled the Red Line Project. Perhaps most galling was Governor Hogan’s move to continue with plans to construct the Purple Line, which would service, among other counties, Montgomery County, which has Maryland’s highest per capita income.
This transportation disparity in Baltimore was reflective of other racial disparities in the city in employment, wealth and education. At the time, Greater Rosemont — a primarily Black neighborhood that would have been served by the Red Line — had an unemployment rate of nearly 25%, compared to the city’s overall unemployment rate of 14.2%. Baltimore has a massive racial wealth gap as well and a hyper-segregated public school system some have called “educational apartheid.”
Sherrilyn Ifill discusses the federal complaint against the Hogan Administration on the Red Line on the Mark Steiner Show. Listen to the podcast here.
