I wish they would re-pave main streets, as opposed to smaller side streets. An example was last year in East Baltimore they repaved a several-mile stretch of S. Highland Ave. in Canton, when they would have been much better off repaving heavier-traveled O'Donnell St. from Conkling St. north to Ponca St, where it is totally covered in potholes. Just my 2 cents...

With all the repaving we are doing, why hasn't the city thought about laying rail in the streets to accomodate future transit? A few things come to mind--we're repaving all of Mt. Vernon, which will just have to be ripped up again if we put in a streetcar, and we're going to redo half of the roads that will either have the red line on them or under them. Just seems like a total waste of money.

REPLY: There are no plans I am aware of for rail transit through Mount Vernon. And I've never heard of a city or state laying track on spec. Isn't it bad enough we still have old streetcar tracks testing our shock absorbers?

I've never heard of a city laying track on spec either, but it seems like good foresight.

New streetcar tracks wouldn't test the shock absorbers. And just imagine, if those old streetcars never went away, we wouldn't even have to worry about our shock absorbers.

I've never understood why this city gets more up in arms about public transportation than murder, but we need to move past that ridiculous logic and get with the program. Cities half our size have more extensive networks.

I've never heard of a city laying track on spec either, but it seems like good foresight. For Mt. Vernon, I was referring to the planned Charles Street Trolley: http://www.charlesstreet.org/trolley/, though the yellow line is supposed to eventually go through there.

Look at this link to Gerald Neily in regards to the waste of repaving Lombard just before the red line goes in: http://baltimorebrew.com/blog/?p=1526

New streetcar tracks wouldn't test the shock absorbers. And just imagine, if those old streetcars never went away, we wouldn't even have to worry about our shock absorbers.

I've never understood why this city gets more up in arms about public transportation than murder, but we need to move past that ridiculous logic and get with the program. Cities half our size have more extensive networks.

For the record, there's only one place where "streetcar tracks" still test the shock absorbers: It's one concrete-paved block in far-off Fairfield east of Curtis Bay (I think it's 4th Avenue). All the other tracks in the streets are either light rail or old freight lines (such as Key Highway and Warner Street). Now, granted, in some places rail is trying to poke its way back up from the asphalt, but that's another story.

It wouldn't be a bad idea if they timed the resurfacing/reconstruction of parts of Charles Street to lay tracks for a potential streetcar. They did this once and are currently doing this in Philadelphia. The city layed tracks back in 1999-2001 for a streetcar line not reopened until 2005 and now for a line that may not reopen until 2014.