Posts tagged Marc
-
Virginia plans to expand the Long Bridge connection with another crossing
The state of Virginia plans to add another crossing to supplement the capacity of the 115-year-old Long Bridge and expand service throughout the region. Addressing the Long Bridge bottleneck is vital to Amtrak and the Virginia Railway Express’s (VRE) ability to run more frequent trains and prepare for expected growth in ridership. Keep reading…
-
MARC’s commuter train connecting West Virginia to DC may drop to only one round trip per day
This past August, the Maryland Transit Administration announced a plan to cut back all but two of the six trains which stop at the MARC Brunswick Line’s three West Virginia stations each day. The new schedule was slated to take effect on November 4 unless West Virginia pays the $3.4 million Maryland wants to continue the line’s current level of service. Now that deadline has been pushed back to the end of the month. Keep reading…
-
Maryland wants to slash its funding for transit, and it would hit Baltimore hard
The Maryland Department of Transportation is slashing transit funding over the next six years by $345 million, and the cuts will hit Baltimore particularly hard. The list of new transit projects in the pipeline for the Baltimore area until 2025 consists of a single pedestrian bridge at the Patapsco light rail station south of the Baltimore City-County line. Keep reading…
-
Maryland and Virginia’s commuter rail look great together on one map
Maryland’s MARC train and Virginia’s VRE are very similar regional rail systems. This map shows what they might look like as a single integrated regional network. Keep reading…
-
Coordinated transit systems make travel a breeze. Here’s how our region could do it.
The Washington area needs first-class transit to meet the needs of current and future workers and businesses. To achieve that goal, the Washington area must break out of its current organizational and jurisdictional siloes and create a new body empowered to coordinate its separate transit services into a seamless, effective network. Keep reading…
-
MARC allows bicycles onboard, unless they’re electric
Maryland Area Regional Commuter Rail (MARC) recently changed its policy to allow bicycles on most Penn Line trains, joining all the other major commuter rail systems in permitting bikes on rail. Unfortunately, like many of those other rail lines, its policy is also limited to non-motorized bikes, meaning they exclude e-bikes Keep reading…
-
Events: Join your GGWash Neighbors at a regional rail talk or a trolley play date
Join fellow GGWash Neighbors at a regional rail talk or a trolley turnaround play date, walk in the spirit of Jane Jacobs in Arlington, learn about fair housing in DC, and more in urbanist events this week. Keep reading…
-
The saga of Waldo Schmitt, the crustacean biologist obsessed with building a commuter rail subway in DC
Prior to World War II, there were even more commuter rail lines leading into DC than there are now. Most of them ended at Union Station, just like they do today. But in the 1940s a man named Waldo Schmitt proposed a commuter rail subway to bring workers closer to the center of downtown, and to connect rail lines from the east and west. Keep reading…
-
There’s no regional rail between DC and Philly, so I tried the bus and van service that fills the gap
All but 63 miles of the 457-mile DC-Boston Northeast Corridor higher-speed rail line are served by commuter or regional rail trains, while Amtrak intercity trains cover the route’s entirety. If commuter trains were extended to fill these gaps, it would be possible to travel inexpensively from DC to Philadelphia with one change of train. Keep reading…
-
Lessons MARC should learn from my most frustrating commute
This past summer was a particularly frustrating time to be a MARC commuter. Delays during July and August were the worst I had endured since choosing it as my primary transportation mode to work. To see just how much of my time was spent delayed, I logged my commute from Odenton to Union Station for the month of September 2018. Keep reading…