On a busy weekday afternoon, cars and taxis clog the pickup loop in front of the main entrance of Baltimore’s Penn Station as luggage-carrying passengers squint in the hot sun looking for their rides.

If Amtrak gets its way, however, that pickup loop will disappear in a few years.

The passenger rail company wants to turn the south side of the station into a pedestrian plaza as part of its ambitious reimagining of the 113-year-old landmark and its surrounding area. Amtrak and the development team, Penn Station Partners, hope such changes will transform the area into a multi-use hub and a model of walkability.

But there’s a complication. The plan would require moving the pickup and drop-off areas for cars and taxis entirely onto nearby streets. And the Maryland Transit Administration has its own plans for those areas to improve bus service.

It’s led to a split among various agencies and the project’s developer over which vehicles — cars and vans, or buses — should have curbside priority outside the station.

Emails among some of these stakeholders obtained by The Baltimore Banner through a public records request show they have been arguing over how to manage future curbside access to the historic train station for years leading up to the recent construction pause. Even after Baltimore City planners expressed concern that proposed changes might violate the city code, Amtrak and Penn Station Partners wanted to keep them.

Last month, Amtrak announced a pause on the redevelopment of the station and its surrounding area, citing escalating costs and a need to revisit construction phasing.

“Amtrak is currently working with our partners to finalize construction funding and phasing before advancing to the next stage of work,” a spokesperson wrote in an email. “This process is not affecting Amtrak service. This is an important project to Amtrak and the Baltimore region, and we are working closely with our development partner, Penn Station Partners, to prudently progress work while we continue to seek funding and investments to deliver the full potential of this program.”

Amtrak did not respond to specific questions about construction phases and whether the disagreement over exterior design in any way led to the pause.

The megaproject — which includes a renovated, reimagined train station with new retail and dining areas and a high-rise building with a mix of uses — is one of multiple marquee projects involving Amtrak in Maryland that have drawn billions of dollars in federal investments.

In January, officials cut the ribbon on a train platform that will soon serve passengers who use Amtrak’s high-speed Acela trains. Scaffolding used for restoration work on the Beaux-Arts-style building came down this year. Despite the pause announced last month, a couple of construction crews remain on-site, advancing work in some of the corridors leading to another train platform.

Amtrak and the development team want to move the taxi and car drop-off to Charles and St. Paul streets, located on the west and east sides of the station, respectively.

Some taxi drivers, including Francis Apugo, who has been driving a cab in Baltimore for 30 years, worry what closing the main entrance loop will mean for them.

“It’s definitely going to affect us,” Apugo said.

Other cab drivers interviewed worry that it will mean rideshare services such as Uber and Lyft could undercut their business more than they already have, or that the constant coming and going of cars, taxis and buses right next to moving traffic along Charles and St. Paul will be unsafe for passengers.

The MTA and city planners are unhappy with that pick-up and drop-off plan. They believe it would undercut the project’s other goal — making Penn Station a true multimodal transit hub that buses and bikes can access seamlessly.

The MTA was awarded a $12 million federal RAISE grant to further that vision — both the agency and the Penn Station Partners development team have funding commitments toward that blueprint wrapped into the grant agreement.

The transit agency wants to convert roughly a mile of lanes on Charles and St. Paul streets closest to the station into red-painted dedicated bus lanes, among other improvements, to speed up service on each. They are two of the most heavily utilized transit corridors in the city, the MTA says, serving not just its buses but the Charm City Circulator and the Johns Hopkins University shuttle. At that level of service, bus stops need to be large enough to accommodate multiple buses arriving at once, according to design standards.

MTA officials fear that bunching cars and taxis would create a bottleneck for buses, slowing transit service at what stakeholders are calling a “future transit hub.” There’s already less local transit headed for the station than before — the MTA’s north-south light rail no longer goes there, and it’s unclear when it will start again.

In an email last September, Maryland Transit administrator Holly Arnold advised state Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld that the concerns were escalating. Bill Struever, the principal developer, called Arnold earlier that day during a meeting with the MTA’s project leads to hash out the issues. Around the same time, U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin’s team also reached out, she wrote.

“Bill is alleging that MTA is the holdup on the project, but the main issue is that their designs don’t align with the City’s Complete Streets Law and apparently the new designs are different from what was shown previously at Department of Planning meetings,” Arnold wrote to Wiedefeld.

The Complete Streets ordinance, a city law passed in 2018, mandates that any change or repaving to a roadway prioritize proposed transit and/or bike facilities over treatments for single-occupancy vehicles. That means bus lanes should receive priority over taxis and cars on Charles and St. Paul, which are city-owned rights of way.

MTA officials raised concerns over how the project design would negatively affect transit service “several years ago,” according to a Jan. 4 email from Patrick McMahon, a former senior planner at the MTA. They suggested a couple of alternatives that they felt would work well for cars and taxis, he wrote.

“We still don’t have signs from your team about a pickup and drop off scheme that won’t negatively impact transit operations,” McMahon wrote to the development team on Feb. 1.

About a week later, a member of the development team responded with concerns of their own about the MTA’s revised budget for the grant, which showed ballooned costs for the bus lanes and other project elements. They didn’t understand how their proposal would make transit service worse than “compared to existing conditions,” he wrote.

“Frankly, at this point our team is wondering if it makes sense for PSP [Penn Station Partners] to continue forward with any participation in the RAISE grant if this is the direction it is headed,” wrote Charlie Bond, a senior development director for Beatty Development, one of two companies that make up Penn Station Partners.

In an email, a spokesperson for Beatty Development said it is continuing to work with the MTA and federal partners on the RAISE grant and that they are “starting to resolve the finer details through the City’s permitting process.”

A spokesperson for the MTA said Friday that they continue to work with Penn Station Partners, which plans to continue its contribution to the RAISE grant, as far as the agency is aware.

But a resolution for the curbside dispute over who gets the right of way — buses or cars — hasn’t been reached, she said.