According to a recent announcement, the southern portion of the Light Rail will open completely on December 5th. No more shuttles, at least in that direction.
On the other hand, they’re closing the northern portion (everything north of North Avenue) on January 3rd. And the shuttle bus system they have set up is confusing, to put it mildly.
From what I can tell, there will be three shuttle routes, designated ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’. ‘A’ shuttles will go to Falls Road. ‘B’ shuttles will go to Timonium Fairgrounds and Warren Road. ‘C’ shuttles will go to Lutherville, Timonium Fairgrounds, Gilroy Road, McCormick Road, Pepper Road, and Hunt Valley. No shuttles will go to Timonium Business Park, Mount Washington, Cold Spring, or Woodberry. Users of any of those latter stops are expected to use buses that run nearby. (Light Rail riders often use the trains to avoid those buses.) The Light-Rail-served terminus of the shuttle routes is not North Avenue (as one might expect), but the Cultural Center stop.
Confused yet? There’s more. The ‘C’ route is a general service route that will run roughly the same hours as the Light Rails does: 5am to midnight on Monday through Saturday and 10am to 8pm on Sunday. The ‘A’ and ‘B’ routes are limited-time express routes: the ‘A’ will run from 6am to 10am and 2:30pm to 6:30pm; the ‘B’ will run from 6am to 9:30am and 2:30pm to 6:30pm. Both express routes will only run on weekdays.
They don’t say what the more specific time constraints are. (Does “to 10am” mean that the last bus will start its last run at 10:00, or that the last bus will arrive at its final destination at 10:00?) They don’t say how often the buses will be running. (Probably because there’s either no set schedule or because the schedule won’t be enforced at all; either would fit the behavior of the southward-running buses this year.)
Neither the MTA’s website nor the Double Track Project’s website has any mention yet of these changes.