A >$10 day-trip to Baltimore – Illegal photos on the Metro, fine on the Light Rail

The fallowing trip I took on Tuesday, June 16, 2009:
The idea for this trip basically comes from one night (the 6th of May) to be exact when I was in my dorm room back at college and was trying to figure out if I could get down to Baltimore for the day to photograph their Metro Subway Line and Light Rail line. I ended up looking on BoltBuses website (MegaBus, its main competitor didn’t seem to work because it serves Baltimore at a Park & Ride on the edge of town, an hour city bus ride from downtown, and not on a Light Rail line), and saw their announcement of new service to Baltimore, so I started searching dates and found out that I could go down to Baltimore for the afternoon (and have about seven hours there) taking their earliest departure in the morning (8:15am, scheduled to arrive at 11:15am), and latest departure in the evening (Dp. 7:15 arrive 10:15, the website claimed), with the ticket only costing $2.50 round-trip ($1 each way, plus the 50¢ reservation fee), I would have wished for an early departure from New York, and to have left Baltimore later for a longer day their, but what can you do when the price is right to ‘Bolt for a Buck’, as their buses advertise. I thought might as well buy the tickets, if I can’t use them I’ve only lost $2.50. June 16 came, I had no real plans so I decided to take my daytrip to Baltimore.

I left the house a little after 7AM, took A train (R44) down to 34th Street, that was arriving right there, I decided to walk through the rush, through Penn Station at rush hour and went underground through the LIRR concourse to 7th Avenue. First I saw an Eastern Travel Bus discharging its passengers and than cross the street to 33rd Street and saw my 2008 Prevost X3-45 bus, the destination sign saying Baltimore and a crowd of people. These people started asking me about the bus to Washington at 8AM, apparently that was where they were all going. I said I was going to Baltimore, our driver radioed the Washington Bus that was apparently stuck in traffic, and told all the annoyed riders. I got on the bus for Baltimore with maybe about twelve other people at 8 AM. There was a slight amount of chatter about just how cheep the bus was. We pulled out at 8:15, leaving a crowd of people wanting to go to Washington, DC standing at the curb, and were on our way.

The bus made its way west down 33rd Street and into the Holland tunnel. I realized that the route the bus will be taking, basically a series of toll highways all built before 1956 and the Interstate Highway Act, but mostly on I-95. (I-95 is actually not continuous between Trenton and the New Jersey Turnpike because of an expressway revolt in Trenton, it doesn’t fallow the turnpike south of Trenton, to take a route basically through central Philadelphia.) I had never really traveled before. I’d never been south of the turn off from the New Jersey Turnpike to the Ben Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia. I’ve been to Washington, DC maybe a half-dozen times, the last time though was on a school trip in 8th grade, every time I’ve gone by train, never road. I thought to myself how extensively I’ve traveled by road, my recent two-week road trip from Colorado Springs home via Calgary and Edmonton and other US cities came to mind, but never the route from New York to Washington. The BlotBus had a quite modern interior with three LCD monitors that simply said enter disk for the entire ride (no movies), seatbelts (something that on a couple of bus trips in England we had been told it was the law to ware, but never on a US bus), and dark black seats that were made out of a material that was trying to feel like leather. It took a bit to actually figure out how to recline the seats also, and I really didn’t find them all that comfortable, perhaps it was just they were so new not enough passengers had warn them in yet. The bus also advertised Wi-Fi but I didn’t have my computer with me so I didn’t have a chance to try it. The only evidence that Bolt Bus is a service of Greyhound is the Greyhound emblem (black dog on a light blue background) along the base of each seat facing the aisle, as well as the white obvious (and required text) along the bottom-middle of the coach that says ‘Operator: Greyhound Lines, Dallas, TX.’ The buses also have (in the rear only, there no front license plates) Texas License Plates. Greyhound is also currently introducing this same bus with the same interior layout and a retro looking blue exterior design on its Northeast routes, all the Greyhound buses I saw along the turnpike had this design. It’s website claims to have 102 of them in their fleet introduced in 2009 (I wonder if this includes the strikingly differently painted Bolt Buses). Throughout the trip I kept hearing the drivers voice from where I was sitting (in the middle of the bus) and clicking noises of his Nextel walkie-talkie, much to my annoyance.

The trip through the Lincoln tunnel was surprisingly quick, but once we got to Jersey it was quite slow moving (but not as bad as regular inbound traffic) as we slowly went around the corkscrew and towards the turnpike on NJ-495. On NJ-495 the slow moving traffic gave me a better look at the most productive and busy bus lanes in the country. It moves more Trans-Hudson commuters into New York City than even commuter rail into Penn Station. It is called the XBL-or exclusive bus lane. What is normally the left lane of west NJ-495 is reversed into a bus lane for inbound buses during the AM Peak Rush Hour. (An interesting NJ Transit TV commercial on YouTube from 1994 has a brief shot of buses in the XBL). I watched as bus after bus, basically a long uninterrupted line of them, passed taking inbound commuters for a day of work in Manhattan. Looking into the buses most of them also looked full (a couple seemed, though, to have practically no one inside), and numerous buses had an extra message added to the destination sign sequence that said “Standing room only” or “Sorry, Bus Full”. I also saw quite a few MTA New York City Transit Express buses running from Western Staten Island via New Jersey for a faster trip to Midtown, I wonder if the MTA has to pay a toll with its EZ-Pass on the turnpike that it takes briefly takes or for the Lincoln Tunnel (one-way) or Geothals Bridge (the other-way). At the western end of the short NJ-495 we reach one of the giant NJ Turnpike toll plazas. This one hasn’t been rebuilt with high-speed EZ-Pass lanes yet, and has we pass above to curve down onto it I notice a quite bizarre site at the entrance to the XBL. A traffic jam of buses, yup lots of large white roofs jostling for position in the XBL, where taffic from the eastern spur of the turnpike south and north meet. No wonder it’s the most productive bus lane in North America, it even has traffic jams at its entrance. Once the bus gets on the turnpike its all smooth sailing, with lots of cars on the roads but traffic moving fine and full speed ahead by Newark Airport, until we reach trees on either side of the road, the only scenery except for service areas, two long river bridges, and one tool plaza after another until we get to the Baltimore suburbs, as we get to the southern end of the New Jersey Turnpike and go over the Delaware Memorial Bridge, (another $3, this direction only, cash if I was in a car toll) two long twin suspension bridges painted green. This is probably the most scenic moment of the drive to Baltimore, the views from this long bridge. The short segment through Delaware is on the Delaware Turnpike, (according to Wikipedia is the most expensive toll road, on a per mile basis, in the nation) and a $4 toll (cash in a car) for the eleven mile journey through Delaware, and through Maryland where I-95 becomes the JFK Memorial Highway (a second name for the Delaware Turnpike also). This road was just as boring as the others, just tall trees on either side, except for the rather scenic crossing on a standard, non-decorative highway bridge of the Susquehanna River on the Millard E. Tydings Memorial Bridge (a $5 toll here for northbound cars only). Once we got to the outskirts of Baltimore, with just suburbs, no views of the Skyline, the bus took city streets into town dropping me off at a bus stop right outside of Union Station, at 11:45, about a half-hour than their website claimed, but I couldn’t see how the bus, with no real giant traffic jams could have gotten down their any faster.

Once I got to the bus stop alongside one of the sidestreets above Union Station (right in the middle of the taxi stand no less), on a bridge with the train tracks of the terminal passing underneath I took some photos of the gorgeous Pennsylvania Railroad era station. It was refreshing to me after visiting so many stations in my travels out west with maybe one VIA or Amtrak train a day, or none whatsoever to be in a station that still had all of its tracks in service accessed from a central bridge above them that was connected to the main station. The central bridge still had old-fashioned wooden benches for waiting on. I went down to the light rail platform that is parallel to the heavy rail tracks and purchased one the cheapest day passes I’ve ever bought from the TVM, only $3.50 for light rail, metro, and local bus. MTA Maryland runs their system in a way that a one-way ride for $1.60 is valid on transit vehicle for one direction only. The system has done away with transfers and you can buy a day pass directly on the bus, a fare system that someone like me, there two ride the rails all day, loves. I looked at the time table and noticed that the next train on the ridiculous single LRV shuttle, that runs every 30 minutes wasn’t for another twenty, so I went back up to street level and walked over to catch a train on the main line at the University-Mount Royal Station, which wasn’t a very long walk. I decided that the first business of the afternoon would be the Metro Subway, mostly because I decided if I was going to get hasseled it would be on that, not simply taking pictures of LRVs from the streets of downtown Baltimore, I had searched and searched MTA Maryland’s website, found nothing about a policy for photography and also sent them an e-mail with no response. I just assume if I have a confrontation it not have me miss my bus.

I got on the subway at Lexington Market Station, got into the front car and rode it northwest (called westbound) towards Owings Mills. My main impression of the Baltimore Metro Subway, a quite, small modern system built in the 1980s, the first section opened in 1983, I found its station architecture completely non-descript. As one of the few post-war built subway systems in the US I felt it lacks the unifying vault station architecture of the DC Metro, that started opening in the 1970s, the line has tried to get some inspiration from DC in the form of the Blue columns that advertise the entrances to Metro stations in downtown, and the craziness that the public artwork gives to the LA Metro Red Line of the 1990s. I found most of the line’s underground stations completely non-descript and are simple bare concrete island platform stations with mezzanine levels but nothing inspiring in the architecture. The elevated and at grade stations as the line goes out towards Owings Mills in the suburbs reminded me of Miami, just like the system should, that is the only other rapid transit line to start opening in the 1980s. Miami and Baltimore even use the same rail cars, Budd’s ‘Universal Transit Vehicle’ has they were marketed, combining there orders into one contract to save money. The above ground stations are just like Miami’s although some are at a grade (all of Miami’s are elevated), with a concrete canopy over the central portion of the station platforms, where staircases lead up or down to a mezzanine area at a middle level or on ground level where fare control is. The line uses double ended automatic gates that flip into themselves and open (just like BART or the DC Metro), they seem to be quite new and require you to put your fare card in, not just to enter the system but to leave it as well. Customer service agents are in their booths at one side of the bank of fare gates, something that every system I’ve ridden that has staff at stations does other than New York. The fare gate system requires you to put your Go Pass (as at least my magnetic day pass was called) through both to enter the system as well as leave it, even though fares aren’t based on distance.

I got into the front car of the train and it has basically a front window with passengers able to look through windows into either the center or right side, of the full-width cab while sitting in seats that face it. Drivers sit on the left, and basically only open and close the doors since ATO takes care of the rest. Every station on the line is an island platform, so the operator can sit on the left, to look out and close the doors. The railroad standard is on the right. The only time they have to get up to close the doors on the right is at either of the terminal stations depending upon which track the train comes in on. Speed is quite fast; I feel it might go 70 in some places.

I took the train out to the first elevated station, West Cold Spring to do a photo stop. I decided not to leave the station for an exterior shot and saw a MTA Maryland transit police van driving out of the station’s park & ride as I was there. I took my photos from the station platform, as well as using my zoom lens for some zoom shots of the train approaching the station, the concrete guideway here reminded me so much of Miami, and got back on the next train northbound that I took to Owings Mills, the northern terminus. I did a full photo essay of this major Park & Ride Station, leaving fare control (the fare gates didn’t care that I got off to get back on). I got back onto the next train to go down one stop to Old Court. I did a full photo essay of the station and a maintenance worker clearly saw me and told me photography was illegal, as I photographed a westbound train leaving the station, and that if I continued the cops would be there. She, I didn’t get the feeling, was going to call them. I told her I had sent an e-mail and searched the agencies website but found no information. She then mentioned something about a letter being sent around (meaning a letter is sent in advance, I guess when permission is given) and told me the customer service number to call and I tried to call it as I boarded the next southbound train, before being disconnected in a small tunnel before the next station, Milford Mill, that I got off at in an attempt to continue my conversation. I discretely took a couple of photos and a train operator on a westbound train saw my camera under my arm, and politely asked me what I was doing I mentioned that I someone already told me it was illegal, and that I searched the website and found nothing about a photography policy. His response was “I’m not surprised” and “I really need to get myself one of those cameras” (I now use my two year old Canon Digital Rebel XTi) before his train pulled out of the station. All-in-all it was a lot better than my last real illegal photography incident, that was coincidently when I was in Miami (stranded there changing planes) last summer, had never looked up the systems policy, and a Miami-Dade Transit security guard came up to the platform, directed by the systems CCTV cameras to tell me to stop taking pictures. He even radioed into his walkie-talkie that He wasn’t aware of a policy. Luckily that was also towards the end of my photo time there, so like in Baltimore I got enough content to at least make a section for the Baltimore Metro.

I decided I might as well continue back in towards downtown before tying MTA-Maryland’s customer service again and walked back to the front of the station and took the next eastbound (inbound) train to John Hopkins Hospital, taking the railfan’s seat. This trip had a couple of interesting moments, one was when the train mysteriously stopped in the tunnel (the driver had been told of a tunnel marker to stop at) for two maintenance workers in the first car. They keyed-open (didn’t actually look at what they did, but I’ll use the MTA’s term) the middle doors of the car to get out and do whatever they were doing. The other was when some friends of the train operator boarded and she got out of her cab to say hello to them as the train was in motion going rather fast through the tunnels. It didn’t matter, all she has to do is open and close the doors, the computers of automatic train operation are driving the train. I got off at John Hopkins Hospital, the systems newest station, and also where the trains are cleaned. I saw some workers with brooms cleaning the trains. This stop has some large decorative murals on the track walls, didn’t take any photos, and went up to street level to try walking back to downtown and called customer service again and was transferred three times (from the first customer service representative, to the switchboard, to the marketing department, to the communications department) before a worker asked me for my name and number and said she would call me back (To the moment of this posting, a full day after this phone call I haven’t received a call back. I realized that I had absolutely no idea where I was going (but also thought that this station looked quite far from the light rail on maps) and went back to get on the Metro and took it one stop Shot Tower/Market Place, that was a bit closer, but luckily had a map posted.

I had a nice walk through downtown Baltimore to the light rail station at University Center-Baltimore Street. I didn’t see a train coming (base service is dreadful, every 30 minutes for trains on the each two station southern branch 15 minutes for the trunk of service, and half-hourly shuttle trains between Camden Yards and Penn Station providing some additional service, there is also some additional service at Rush Hours that I took advantage of) so I fallowed the light rail tracks that run in there own lanes on downtown streets to the next stop Convention Center. Here I took the next southbound train (It’s destination was Cromwell/Glen Burnie) and had look at my copy of the timetable while on-board and noticed that it would work well to do two photo stops (there was an extra train for rush hour on top of base service that would result in only a gap of five minutes between Cromwell branch trains, my one real goal for the Light rail was to get both stops on one of the branches). As soon as the line leaves downtown and by the football stadium it runs over marshes and feels rural, stopping at stations on its exclusive ROW at a grade (with may grade crossings), like you should really be riding a suburbian commuter rail line. The line uses high-floor LRVs at street level stops with wheelchair ramps at ends of platforms for wheelchair access to the front car, just like most pre-2000 (when low-floor LRVs stated) Light Rail Systems that don’t have high-floor platforms (the main example of these of Los Angeles, Edmonton, and Calgary). The train feels like its connecting small suburban towns with the city center but no real feelings of inner city neighborhoods in between. I got off at Nursery Road and did a photo stop, and photo essay of the simple station, before taking the next train (bound for BWI) to Linthicum for another photo stop. As I was doing my photo stop an older gentleman waiting for a northbound, inbound train asked me if I was shooting film or digital and we had a bit of a conversation from across the tracks about the virtues of each. I took the next train (bond for Cromwell) to the one intermedite stop on its branch, Ferndale, for a photo essay. Ferndale is a rare island platform station on the Baltimore Light Rail (most of its stops have side platforms, the opposite of the exclusive island platformed Metro Subway). I had written down the stations at home that might be walkable between and had a mile walk through hell south to the terminus at Cromwell/Glen Berry. This station has a large park and ride lot. This walk was hell, along a suburban four plus lane highway with no sidewalks, or obvious places to walk, and a shoulder whose width varied with the various turn lanes of an interchange with I-97. The terminal station, right near an interstate, is one with a huge park & ride lot.

I got back on an inbound train after a photo essay (I thought I might end up there for half an hour do to the light rail’s abysmal service) but the train left almost immediately. As I headed back towards downtown I decided to make a photo stop at Baltimore Highlands, and after photographing the simple two side platformed station with its basic furnishings, a small canopied area of flip-up leaning benches on the inbound platform, TVMs, but nothing on the outbound platform. I decided to walk north to the next stop, Patapsco. This was a much nicer walk than my previous one, along a narrow road with very little traffic through this simple, modest community of one family homes, I got a little nervous when the road said no outlet has I got close to Pataspsco, but there was an obvious path down a bit of a hill to the quite crowded station there because it has a decent sized parking lot and quite a lot of connecting bus routes. A northbound train arrived almost immediately and had a fare inspector onboard; it was quite crowded with people headed in for the night’s Orioles vs. Mets Interleague play game. I almost felt like I never left New York, the amount of Mets gear people seemed to be wearing. The fare inspector didn’t seem to have caught someone yet, but did let a mother and son going to the game who said they were from out of town and had apparently not bought a ticket. She was quite chatty to, slowly doing the rounds checking tickets. I decided I would get of at Cadman Yards with the rest of the fans, I wanted to get some photos of the Marc platform (and a train in the station) that was adjacent to the line. I got off there and did an extensive photo essay, with some employees definitely seeing me, but none seemed to care. I was planning to walk down through the parking lots to the Hamburg Street station that serves the Baltimore Ravens, but realized that with all the cars coming in for the night’s baseball game that didn’t seem feasible. I decided to take a break from the light rail and walked around Camden Yards, ending back up at the Convention Center Station.

By now it was about five-thirty and I decided I would take the Light Rail north a bit. I realized had I not spent so much time walking I could have gotten up to Hunt Valley, but didn’t care, Baltimore was a city I knew would probably take at least two days to get photos of every station. I took the next train that almost immediately after getting north of downtown began winding its way through quite hilly terrain (but no tunnels or street running sections like Pittsburgh) north, with mostly only trees visible from the train line, there were some industrial areas through. I got off at Mount Washington that had a small parking lot and what looked like a little village center beyond the parking lot and took the next inbound train back to Center Street to walk and photograph the rest of the rail stations in downtown. I walked along the line up to Cultural Center – State Center, and looked at the timetable, noticing there was the half-hourly single LRV (all mainline trains run two LRVs coupled to one another) into Union Station, so I took that that curved off the mainline onto a single track branch that curved down to and along the mainline Amtrak tracks.

I was now quite early for my bus (it was only 6:40) and was curious if the Amtrak information people sitting beneath the flipping flip-flip board (there an extremely scarce item) knew anything about Bolt Bus, one did, the other didn’t, and told me to catch it up on St. Paul St and that there should be a small sign. (I hadn’t noticed one when I got off). I walked out of the station and up there that is right on a bridge over the rail line and where the taxis line up for fares. I took some photos through gaps in the high fencing (and one panel that is translucent rather than opaque) of the station platforms and rail line. There was a small sign at the opposite end of the bridge from where I got off. A taxi driver eventually asked me if I needed a fare I said no and was waiting for BoltBus. He told me that departures stopped at the sign and not the regular local bus stop where I got off the bus. There was still no sign of the bus, but I did notice someone waiting with a suitcase at the sign. Finally at 7:10 the BoltBus Showed up. He asked for A coded tickets first, than B fallowed by C. (My boarding number was B-01 on each trip, I have a feeling I was the first person to buy a ticket on these buses which gave me the $1 fare. A must be reserved for passengers with special needs) The bus left with 5 people in it, promptly at 7:15. The driver made one announcement as we pulled out of Baltimore that really only said to keep Cell Phone Calls to a Minimum and to come up to the front of the bus if we had any questions. I didn’t hear him on his Nextel once the entire ride. We ran through downtown Baltimore, giving me a nice view of the city, and left a very different way than I came in, through the Fort McHenry Tunnel, an eight lane tunnels with four bores, and another $2 toll if I was in a car. I continued back north on I-95 as it got dark out, switching off between reading and dozing to my iPod. I was quite surprised that as it got dark out very view sections of the road (until we got towards New Brunswick on the Jersey Turnpike) had lights. It was surprisingly dark. The bus made its way through the Lincoln Tunnel, exited the tunnel’s Manhattan approach road network at 30th Street and ran down to 6th Avenue to go back up to 33rd Street where it dropped its few passengers off.
I dashed the block over the 8th Avenue to hop on the A train, as I swiped my MetroCard there was a C train arriving on the station entrance that is directly on the local track, I hopped on the C, took it one stop to 42nd Street where an A train was waiting across the platform. As I dashed across the platform and onto it I realized that something didn’t feel right about the train, for example no painted looked grey lower stripe beneath the windows, the area beneath the windows was shiny. Also an more importantly when I took a seat next to the door I started leaning my head and there was no glass between me and the doorway. Then I realized I wasn’t on a R44 like I am used to, it was a R46. There slowly being transferred to the A line as R160s are being delivered to the Jamaica Yard. I took it up to 181st, even stopping to get a photo of the back of the train and stepped in my front door at 11:10, in incredible time back from New York’s Penn Station, less than 4 hours ago I was just stepping onto the Bolt Bus in Baltimore, my journey had begun almost exactly 16 hours ago.

All-in-all it was a good and perhaps cheapest rail fanning date ever. My journey caused only 6 dollars plus the $3.23 deducted from my pay-per-ride MetroCard. I traveled over four hundred miles overland in total, all for less than ten dollars!