The origins of the Metro Subway lie in a transit plan drawn up for the Baltimore area written in 1966 that envisioned six rapid transit lines radiating out from the city center. By the time this vision began to be translated into reality, construction costs in the United States had raised to the point of making transit construction prohibitively expensive, and there was less federal money available for transit projects than had been in the past. When the Metro Subway finally opened in 1983, it was only a single line, the "Northwest" line of the 1966 plan. Service was provided between Charles Center in downtown Baltimore and Reisterstown Road Plaza in the northwest section of the city. (A decade later, much of the "North" and "South" lines of that plan would come into existence as the Balti