Posted on 07/17/25
| News Source: FOX45
Baltimore, MD - July 17, 2025 - A vital bridge linking Baltimore’s downtown is deteriorating, as Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s administration persists in spending on the Red Line project amid a looming $1.3 billion transportation budget shortfall.
The claims from the governor’s office come as Spotlight on Maryland visited the underside of the Russell Street bridge in Baltimore City on Wednesday.
Officially named the Russell Street Viaduct, the six-lane bridge functions as an essential route into downtown Baltimore, where MD Route 295, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, and I-95 intersect near M&T Bank Stadium.
Federal Highway Administration records show that the bridge, constructed in 1951, experiences more than 70,000 daily crossings.
During Spotlight on Maryland’s visit to the bridge, several visible sections of the supporting horizontal steel trusses holding up the roadway deck appeared to be missing due to rust. Several drainpipes beneath the bridge were also absent, with piles of what seemed to be broken steel pieces collecting at the base of visibly cracking vertical support beams.
A law enforcement officer in a marked patrol vehicle said he has been parking under the bridge during his breaks for years. He added that he has watched the structure fall into what he called “a sad state.” The officer requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media.
“You should be under this bridge when it is raining,” the officer said. “It is like a waterfall because all of the rainwater flows from the driving deck [above] through the pipes that are broken, and water leaks through the holes in the bridge.”
The National Bridge Inventory, maintained by the U.S. Department of Transportation, graded the Russell Street Viaduct’s substructure as being in “critical condition.” The database information key described the substructure as the support beneath a bridge’s driving deck that transfers the load to the ground.
“‘Critical condition’ – advanced deterioration of primary structural elements,” said the National Bridge Inventory report about the Russell Street bridge's substructure grade. “Fatigue cracks in steel or shear cracks in concrete may be present or scour may have removed substructure support.”
Unless closely monitored, it may be necessary to close the bridge until corrective action is taken,” the federal report’s classification definition added.
In a letter obtained by Spotlight on Maryland, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott sent a request in May to the secretary of the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT), requesting the state’s assistance with the Russell Street bridge. Scott wrote that he would like the state to allocate repair funding for the bridge through the Consolidated Transportation Program.
“The existing bridge has deteriorated, and despite regular maintenance, [it] needs replacement,” Scott wrote. “Despite the availability of federal funds for the design phase, there is no available funding to cover the construction costs, which are estimated to exceed $100 million.”
Maryland state Del. Nino Mangione, R-Baltimore County, said that transportation issues, including the condition of Russell Street, prompted him to question the viability and management of the Maryland Transportation Trust Fund (MTTF), which funds roads and transit in the state.
Maryland is facing not only a financial cliff with transportation funding, but with the budget itself,” Mangione said. “The governor and the Democratic supermajority ran through a $5 billion surplus in just under three years."
A transit cost report published by Comptroller Brooke Lierman in March estimated that the MTTF is projected to incur a $1.3 billion budget deficit over the next six years. Citing “operating costs are growing faster than dedicated revenues,” Lierman added a commission the Maryland General Assembly established in 2023 to study and make recommendations to fix the MTTF was relaunched in 2024.
Leirman said in her publication that the government commission dedicated to fixing the MTTF issues has not yet released its final report.
Meanwhile, Mangione said the MTTF’s structural issues arise from long-term transportation agency “mismanagement” by elected officials, including Moore's ongoing push for costly priorities without a funding source to support their construction.
“The governor keeps pushing forward with the Red Line project that we don’t have the funding for,” Mangione said. “When you don’t have the money, you can’t have these ambitious projects. It’s basic math. It’s basic fiscal sanity.”
Spotlight on Maryland pressed MDOT on Wednesday about whether the state is still funding the development of the Red Line, a proposed new 14-mile light rail line that runs east to west in the Baltimore area. Moore revived the project after former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, canceled the effort, calling it a “boondoggle.”
Even in challenging budget times, our administration has remained committed to advancing planning and design activities for the Red Line, with $152 million currently programmed in MDOT’s six-year capital program,” MDOT said by email. “The FY 25 [budget] included $30 million for Red Line planning and design activities.”
“We’ve been broadly committed to rebuilding the MTA system after years of neglect,” MDOT added. The state agency stressed that it routinely inspects its bridges for safety.
After confirming that funding for the Red Line remains in progress despite an estimated $1.3 billion MTTF deficit, Spotlight on Maryland sent Moore’s office an email Wednesday with several questions about how he plans to finance key transportation projects, including any aid to Baltimore to replace the Russell Street Bridge.
Moore’s office said the Hogan administration “left the state’s transportation system in a state of serious disinvestment,” pointing to budget cuts to MDOT during the pandemic and returning a $900 million selective federal grant after canceling the estimated $2.9 billion Red Line project.
“In years prior to 2023, more than $3 billion in one-time federal COVID relief dollars kept critical services moving but when those dollars ran out in FY2024, the deep issues within Maryland’s Transportation Trust Fund were on full display creating tough trade off decisions for the Moore-Miller Administration and the General Assembly to make,” Moore’s office said.
“Despite the challenges created in the last decade, Gov Moore remains committed to investing in reliable, safe, and sustainable infrastructure that protects lives and drives economic growth,” Moore’s office added.
Mangione said that one way to emphasize transportation funding for state lawmakers is to change how the state gas tax is calculated. He proposed a related bill during the most recent session of the state assembly.
The Baltimore County state lawmaker said that when tax and fee changes are automatically tied to systems like the Consumer Price Index and pre-tax gasoline prices, such as the gas tax, the state assembly often doesn't thoroughly review agency budgets because they don't need to vote on those topics.
“It’s about transparency,” Mangione said. “Let the people of Maryland know who is coming into your back pockets.”