BALTIMORE — Folks who use the Light Rail to get around are going to have to make other plans.
Light Rail services will be suspended starting Friday, December 8; MTA officials say the move is out of an abundance of caution after two safety issues with Light Rail cars.
The high voltage conduits on the vehicles being punctured is the first issue. This was discovered after a "fire event" on October 21. As a result of this incident, a high voltage blowout took place.
"We had initially anticipated just to be the one from the inspections that we were doing," said Holly Arnold, administrator of the Maryland Transit Administration, at an emergency press conference during the Thursday evening commute. "We've done some visual inspections and have determined over the weekend, it's a more systemic issue than what we thought, and that's where we need to pull the cars in service so we can inspect all the rail cars as quickly as possible."
The second issue was related to another piece of equipment, responsible for connecting the cars, which caused six "smoke events."
Shuttle bus service will be implemented at all Light Rail stops, which means other bus routes may also impacted by delays.
Arnold said because of limited resources, they'll have to pull drivers and buses from existing routes. Buses will be considerably slower than the normal light rail - it takes about two hours to get from end to end on a bus - but they will try to stay true to the original schedule, Arnold told reporters.
“We’ve been in touch with the Moore Administration about this issue and have been working to identify workaround solutions for residents who rely on Light Rail – especially in Baltimore’s historically underserved communities – and ensure Light Rail services resume in a timely manner," Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said in a Thursday evening statement.
"Thousands of Baltimoreans depend on the light rail to get to and from work, school, doctor’s appointments, and other crucial parts of life. A prolonged suspension of services is simply unacceptable, and we will be doing everything in our power to ensure MTA addresses the necessary repairs as quickly as possible,” Scott added.
Light Rail service will return to full service once they have 19 rail cars available, again, there is no end date.
Inspections will begin immediately to repair the vehicles.
"There shouldn't be holes in the conduit and we discovered there are. And so essentially we have to mitigate that now, it's not a normal maintenance, routine maintenance activity," Arnold clarified.
The Light Rail has a daily ridership of about 10,000 people, Arnold said. The shutdown will mark a considerable hit to a service already struggling to recover from pre-pandemic ridership - 55 percent of what it was before Covid.