This summer does not belong to the users of Baltimore’s MTA Light Rail system.
A week after suspending service from Camden Yards up to North Avenue as the city makes emergency repairs to a massive sinkhole downtown, the state agency that runs Baltimore’s public transit announced Wednesday it’s also suspending service from Lutherville to North Avenue for unrelated maintenance.
The shutdown there will last three weeks, from next Monday through Aug. 13, and is happening to allow for “repairs to address erosion to sections of the Light RailLink track foundation in the vicinity of Cold Spring Lane,” according to a press release. A bus bridge will be set up to take passengers to each stop in between.
The MTA undertook emergency repairs at the same stop in April just before Opening Day for the Orioles season, which it said was due to erosion from heavy rains.
This latest announcement means the light rail won’t be operating from Camden Yards all the way up to Lutherville, a stretch with 14 of the entire train system’s 33 stops. It also means all but three four of the stations in the city—M&T Bank Stadium, Westport, Cherry Hill and Camden Yards (with no trains heading north from there)—aren’t serving riders for a chunk of the summer.
“The safety of riders is our first priority,” MDOT MTA Administrator Kevin Quinn said in a statement Wednesday. “While the well-being of everyone who rides our system is our primary concern, we are focused on completing repairs thoroughly, efficiently and as quickly as possible.”
The MTA has said it doesn’t have a timeline for when service will be restored for the shuttered portion from Camden Yards to North Avenue.
For the other stretch, the agency said it will use the next few weeks to make other improvements to stops near Cold Spring Lane, including new pedestrian walkways at the Falls Road, Mt. Washington and Woodberry stops and replacing tracks at Woodberry.
Funds for the repairs come from the agency’s $3.3 billion capital investment budget for the next six years, the MTA said.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated only three of the city’s MTA stations would be serving riders for a period this summer, but it’s actually four if including limited service from Camden Yards. We regret the error.
