After 11 Hours, Council Backs $1.4 Billion Tidewater Line Extension
The 7-4 vote sends the long-debated light-rail project to the state for funding review. Opponents in Eastmere say the fight over the route is not over.
Port Calder — The Tidewater Line extension, a light-rail project that has been proposed, shelved, redrawn and revived at least four times since 2009, cleared its most significant local hurdle early Tuesday when the City Council voted 7-4 to endorse the $1.4 billion plan and send it to the state for funding review.
The vote came just after 1 a.m., at the end of an 11-hour session that drew more than 300 public speakers and stretched the chamber's overflow seating into the lobby and onto the steps of City Hall, where residents watched a livestream on a borrowed projector.
"We have studied this line longer than some of the people in this room have been alive," Council President Marguerite Fennimore said before casting her vote. "At some point, the most expensive thing we can do is keep studying it."
The 6.8-mile extension would carry trains from the existing Foundry Quay terminus across a rebuilt Marrow River bridge, through the Eastmere and Calder Heights neighborhoods, and on to a new terminal beside St. Bride's Hospital. Planners estimate it would serve about 31,000 weekday riders by 2035 and cut the trip from Calder Heights to downtown from 48 minutes by bus to 19 by rail.
A split along familiar lines
Support broke largely along the city's east-west divide. The four members who voted no, led by Eastmere's representative, Councilor Darnell Pruitt, argued that the route places the heaviest construction burden on a neighborhood that has already absorbed a highway interchange, a waste-transfer station and, most recently, a six-year sewer replacement.
"My constituents are not against trains," Mr. Pruitt said. "They are against being told, again, that the price of progress for the rest of the city is four years of dust on their windowsills."
Mr. Pruitt proposed an amendment that would have shifted roughly a mile of the route north onto Kestrel Avenue, a wider commercial corridor. City engineers estimated the change would add $190 million and at least 18 months to the project, and the amendment failed 5-6.
"At some point, the most expensive thing we can do is keep studying it."Council President Marguerite Fennimore
Supporters included a coalition of hospital workers, students at Marrow Valley Community College and several small-business owners near Foundry Quay, who said the existing bus routes are too slow and unreliable for shift workers.
Renata Coelho, a respiratory therapist at St. Bride's, told the council she spends close to three hours a day commuting from Calder Heights. "I have missed bedtime for two years," she said. "I'm not asking for a miracle. I'm asking for a train."
The Tidewater Line, by the numbers
- 6.8 miles of new track, 9 new stations
- $1.4 billion estimated cost, in 2026 dollars
- 31,000 projected weekday riders by 2035
- Construction start: spring 2028, at the earliest
What happens next
Tuesday's vote does not guarantee the line will be built. The city has committed $260 million from a 2022 transportation bond, and officials are counting on the state's Regional Mobility Fund for roughly half the total. The remaining share would come from a federal transit grant the city has applied for, unsuccessfully, twice before.
A state review panel is expected to take up the application in February. Transit Director Owen Achterberg said the council's endorsement, with a clear majority, would strengthen the city's case. "Funders want to see that a city will not lose its nerve halfway through," he said.
The council also approved, 10-1, a package of measures meant to soften the blow in Eastmere: a construction-noise curfew of 8 p.m., a $12 million fund for small businesses along the route, and a community liaison office on Larch Street. Mr. Pruitt voted for the package while calling it "a nice umbrella for a hurricane."
Outside City Hall, as the session ended, a small group of Eastmere residents unfurled a hand-painted banner reading "Route It Right." Their organizer, a retired schoolteacher named Lorraine Abernathy, said the group would press its case before the state panel.
"They had their vote," she said, zipping her coat against the cold. "Now we'll have our say."
An earlier version of this article misstated the length of the extension. It is 6.8 miles, not 6.2.