Commentary

Next summer, the District of Columbia will begin offering free bus rides to anyone traveling within the city limits, making D.C. the biggest U.S. city yet to waive or significantly reduce fares to increase transit use and help low-income commuters get to jobs. The waiver, approved on Dec. 6, will not be cheap. It’s expected to cost the city an extra $43 million at a time when the region’s transit system has already been struggling financially.

This month President Biden signed into law the Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research Expansion Act, and it’s a good first start. But as a board-certified emergency physician working directly with medical cannabis patients in Maryland since our medical cannabis law passed, I know we need to do more. First, the bill still does not allow research to be done on the cannabis products that almost 5.5 million patients are using legally in their state programs today. For the last quarter century, states have had to individually pass medical cannabis laws to help their citizens.

The year ended in Baltimore with a new commercial village emerging at the former Port Covington railway yard in South Baltimore. It’s been renamed the Baltimore Peninsula and, perhaps because it’s somewhat hidden by the Interstate 95 elevated highway, is not so visible. Skeptics wonder about The Peninsula. There is a precedent. What were once oil storage tanks and industrial sites in the part of Canton near the waterfront are now a new neighborhood that seems to enlarge and change month by month.

For some reason — perhaps for motivational purposes or just because it’s a newspaper tradition — I’ve again compiled a list of things I’d like to do and things I’d like to see in the new year. I’ve also made a couple of random predictions. I offer all this with one request: Please don’t hold me to any of it. Things I’d like to see: Ravens kicker Justin Tucker starring in a sitcom in the offseason, where he plays a peewee football coach, or something like that. The guy has real showbiz pizazz...

Each month, young Marines, soldiers, sailors, airmen and airwomen are killed when their armored vehicles flip over. Those who survive can face amputations, traumatic brain injuries and a tough future. Today, more young people, some in their teens, die in training than in combat. Nearly all these lethal training fiascoes — outrageously labeled “mishaps” by military bureaucrats — are preventable.

Regarding the Dec. 29 front-page article “Southwest didn’t heed warnings, unions say”: As passengers find out that many shortcomings exist in our nation’s airline system, they might not appreciate that the airline “meltdown” affecting millions of travelers around Christmastime was completely avoidable. The problem goes back to 1978, when the airline industry was deregulated, and competition and profits were prioritized over basic public-utility goals.

As Christopher Schafer, tailor to men rich and poor, described two terrible events of the last year — the thief who pointed a gun at him, the fire that damaged his new shop in Fells Point — it suddenly made sense that a man who had successfully pulled away from addictions to drugs and alcohol would become attached to Baltimore. A man in recovery — for Schafer, 18 years now — understands that it’s a long, hard road that never ends. Recovery means remembering who you were, what you went through, never losing hope for a better life, never letting go once you get there. It tends to foster empathy, too.

It’s sobering, but not surprising, to read that the Environmental Protection Agency has found that the pollution reduction goals identified in the 2010 Chesapeake Bay Agreement will not be met. The EPA recommends that a new agreement and timeline be developed over the next year. This is the time for all of us to think about what can be done to help the states in the bay watershed finally achieve a clean Chesapeake Bay.