Reservoir Hill residents seek to stop Amtrak’s West Baltimore tunnel in civil rights complaint

A group of Reservoir Hill residents are seeking to halt the construction of a proposed Amtrak tunnel that would curve beneath the historic West Baltimore neighborhood in a new civil rights complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The complaint claims the placement of the $4.7 billion Frederick Douglass Tunnel would harm Black and low-income communities disproportionately and that Amtrak has not done enough to gather community feedback.

“The Reservoir Hill Association requests that the DOT open a Title VI investigation into the racially disparate impact of the Frederick Douglass Tunnel Program,” the group wrote in the complaint. “As part of this investigation, the DOT should require Amtrak to halt its construction of the Frederick Douglass Tunnel” and a ventilation building that is planned for the neighborhood.

The Reservoir Hill Association is represented by New York University School of Law’s Civil Rights and Racial Justice Clinic. The group brought their complaint under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which allows federal agencies to block the recipients of federal funding from implementing programs that have an “unjustified discriminatory impact.”

The tunnel project would replace the 150-year-old Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel, which connects routes along Amtrak’s busy northeast corridor. The tunnel’s age and deteriorating condition requires trains to slow to 30 mph, creating regular delays.

The old tunnel passes beneath Bolton Hill, Upton and Sandtown-Winchester. The new 4-mile tunnel would pass beneath West Baltimore neighborhoods including Reservoir Hill, Penn North and Midtown-Edmondson on a path between Baltimore’s Penn Station and the West Baltimore MARC station.

The civil rights complaint argues that the chosen path would burden Black communities with noise pollution, property acquisitions by Amtrak and construction-related waste. Residents also are concerned about the possibility that the tunnels would be used by diesel freight trains, contributing to air pollution.

The new Frederick Douglass Tunnel, named for the Maryland-born abolitionist who escaped slavery, is expected to primarily serve electrified Amtrak and MARC passenger trains.

The complaint links the tunnel plan to a history of transportation infrastructure projects that sacrificed Baltimore’s Black neighborhoods, including the infamous “Highway to Nowhere,” and argues that residents have not had adequate opportunities to provide input.

Community meetings have been advertised poorly and Amtrak officials have been unresponsive or condescending when confronted with questions, the complaint says.

The complaint takes aim at a ventilation facility slated to be built near an elementary school in Reservoir Hill, asking the U.S. Department of Transportation to force Amtrak to choose a new location and consult with the community on the building’s design.

Demolition at the site began in February, according to the complaint.

The residents also wrote that none of the original 14 design options for the new tunnel program included a path that would have run through a predominantly white neighborhood. The complaint claims Amtrak never seriously considered a “no-build” plan that would have involved restoring the existing tunnel beneath Bolton Hill, a whiter and wealthier neighborhood that abuts Reservoir Hill.

Amtrak and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration both declined to comment.

In a statement, Reservoir Hill Association leaders Keondra Prier and Carson Ward said the tunnel plan is an example of systemic racism that demands a response from public officials.

“Many community leaders in Baltimore are begging for development that doesn’t depend on turning our neighborhoods into sacrifice zones,” they said in the statement.

“We’re in an amazing moment for Maryland and Baltimore where our leaders are recognizing the outcomes of over two centuries of decisions that intentionally left Black communities with less. Now it’s time to move beyond rhetoric.”