November 21, 1983
Regular operations began for the Baltimore Metro SubwayLink, a rapid transit line serving Maryland’s largest city and its northwestern suburbs, early that Monday morning. Rick Hirsch, reporting for the Miami Herald, highlighted both the significance of this line and the overall route it encompassed.
Hirsch stated, “The Baltimore Metro — America’s first rapid transit system to open in the ‘80s — links Charles Center, the heart of downtown, to a suburban shopping mall on the city’s northwest side.” He also noted, “The first 4.5-mile [7.2-kilometer] section of the Metro is underground, a are s are six of its nine stations. As the system nears suburban Baltimore its next 2.5 miles [four kilometers] are elevated . . . and the last mile is [the last 1.6 kilometers are] at ground level.”
As Hirsch confirmed as well, the inaugural festivities for the Metro SubwayLink took place the previous Saturday. He reported, “The Metro’s debut featured free rides for the public on an unseasonably warm but gray morning and praise from potential riders politicians alike.” The public officials on hand for these festivities included Harry Hughes, governor of Maryland from 1979 to 1987; and William Donald Schaefer, mayor of Baltimore, between 1971 and 1987. (Schaefer succeeded Hughes as governor and served in this position until 1995.)
In reporting on the start of regular service for the Metro SubwayLink on November 21, Mark Parrent of the Baltimore-based Evening Sun noted that “the operation ran with little trouble.” Patrick A. McGuire of the Baltimore Sun recounted who may or may not have been the first passenger to travel on the line that morning.
McGuire reported in the next day’s edition of the Baltimore Sun, “At 5 a.m. yesterday, as the gates at the Charles Center Metro station cranked open, Robert Gross turned to his 8-year-old son Brandon and said, ‘Come on, let’s go make history.’” McGuire stated that “with an ‘ooh’ and a ‘gollee,’ young Brandon pushed his way through the turnstiles and into Baltimore’s mass rapid transit record book.”
McGuire then asserted, though, that Brandon’s “first-customer status may end up with an asterisk beside it, for at almost the same moment, 8 miles [12.9 kilometers] to the north at Reisterstown Plaza Metro station, another scene was being played out.” This scene specifically involved Baltimore resident Arnold Landon, a man who — according to the Maryland Mass Transit Administration (now officially known as the Maryland Transit Administration) — had been standing in line at the station since noon the previous day.
McGuire reported, “At Charles Center, Brandon and his father boarded the 5:02 train to Reisterstown Plaza, and both MTA [Maryland Mass Transit Administration] and Mr. Gross’s wristwatch agree that the train left on time.” McGuire went on to reveal a plot twist, though. “The train leaving Reisterstown Plaza, meanwhile, pulled out at 5:03 a.m., according to the watches carried by reporters,” he wrote. “The MTA, however, disagreed with the synchronized watches of the news media, saying the clock in their operations center read 30 second past 5 a.m., apparently giving the [first-passenger honor] to Mr. Landon.”
Everything evidently worked out for the best for everyone involved, though. According to McGuire, “If the increasing excitement and awe in Brandon’s voice yesterday morning was any measure, it would appear that the ride will at least go down in Mr. Gross’s own personal record book, the MTA’s clock notwithstanding.” By the end of the evening rush hour, MTA deputy administrator Ronald J. Hartman had estimated that about 20,000 people had traveled on the line that day.
The Metro SubwayLink in its current form has 14 stations altogether and a total of 15.4 miles (24.8 kilometers) between the Baltimore County community of Owings Mills and the main campus of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the eastern part of the city. (The accompanying photo of a Metro SubwayLink train departing Milford Mill station in the Baltimore County community of Lochearn was taken in 2008.)
Photo Credit: Sturmovik at English Wikipedia (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)
For more information on the Baltimore Metro SubwayLink, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_Metro_SubwayLink
Transportation History 
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