We respectfully petition you to assure funding is denied for the B&P Tunnel plan. The current plan does not prioritize Baltimore’s citizens, safety, health, and quality of life but places corporate profit over our lives. The current plan will HURT us, damage our homes, negatively impact our health, and detrimentally affect our communities and future. Therefore, we OBJECT to the current four-bore, double-stacked freight sized B&P Tunnel Plan. 

We support passenger train travel improvement through the city. We want a successful profitable port and understand it depends on rail freight, but do NOT support opening a huge swath for double-stacked freight through dense residential areas and fragile architecture. There are alternatives.  We agree with experts who have long said that we need to separate passenger rail from freight. If Maryland is serious about its port AND people, it needs to build a dedicated freight line around the city as was proposed years ago. There are inconsistencies and inadequacies in the Environmental Studies, and angles in the PR effort that border on denial of the freight component.

The current plan is an affront to Environmental Justice, disproportionately impacting already struggling low-income communities of color. It attacks our health and the very air we breathe by increasing and concentrating toxic diesel fumes right next to homes and two schools in an area plagued by asthma and a city already subject to red alert pollution days. It is a hazard to human life, and a potential catastrophic disaster based on abundant evidence. It is detrimental to quality of life, stability of architecture and community; it hampers future local development and does NOT serve the people of Baltimore. It only serves big rail, on the taxpayers’ dime and at the expense of our city.

We urge you to call for a redesign of the passenger lines through - and freight lines around - Baltimore City. Stop the funding and develop a plan that will protect our lives!

BACKGROUND:

The current B&P Tunnel Plan is BAD: Dangerous, destructive, polluting, environmentally unjust, potentially disastrous, and opens a huge swath for 388 trains per day, including hazardous double-stack freight trains right through Baltimore City, industrializing residential areas.

The plan calls for FOUR double-stack freight height tunnels to accommodate a huge increase in massive, loud, polluting, diesel-powered freight trains. These can legally carry explosive, toxic, flammable, gaseous and radioactive materials under our homes and through the neighborhoods where we live and work. We need a revision with Baltimore City's well-being and future as priorities.