Greater Baltimore Bus Initiative

The Greater Baltimore Bus Initiative (GBBI) (pronounced GIBBY) was a sweeping overhaul planned by the Maryland Transit Administration under the administration of then-Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich and his transportation secretary Robert Flanagan that was said to be the largest single-phase overhaul in the history of the agency and its parent companies.

According to Ehrlich and Flanagan, the initiative was a series of improvements to the transit system in the Baltimore area. While some of the proposed changes were obvious improvements, others were heavily opposed by riders, elected officials, and advocates, who considered them inconveniences and losses of service. As a result, a scaled-back version of the plan dubbed Phase I was implemented on its originally scheduled date, October 23, 2005, that included about one-third of the original plans and some modifications to those. Of those plans not implemented on this date, some were entirely scrapped, and others delayed.

During 2006, a second wave of changes dubbed Phase II was proposed and was modified during that year. Though Flanagan continued to state these were improvements, these plans continued to be viewed as controversial and resulted in legislative action to delay their implementation.

Following these political battles and the change of administration in the state of Maryland, the remainder of GBBI was officially canceled in on May 9, 2007, with no further routing changes being made under that name. But in September 2007, MTA announced that a series of hearings would be held the following month regarding a new wave of proposed changes. Though not titled "Greater Baltimore Bus Initiative" or anything similar, some of the planned changes did resemble those previously announced as part of GBBI. Most of these new routings were implemented on February 17, 2008.

Announced in the Summer 2005, the GBBI plan involved routing and scheduling changes to all but six of the agency's then 59 local bus lines and some of its commuter services. These modifications included some expansions, increased frequency of service on some lines, consolidation of some lines, and elimination of others.

According to MTA, service would be improved in the following ways:

The plan did not meet well with riders, community activists, and elected officials. According to critics, the plan had the following problems:

A series of hearings were held during that summer pertaining to the changes. Many of the modifications were met with heavy criticism from the riders, the media, elected officials, and civic organizations, and as a result, many planned changes were either delayed or not implemented at all.

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