Why is it so hard to get to Annapolis by transit?

This article was updated on January 7, 2020.

It’s really difficult to get to Annapolis, Maryland without a car, and it doesn’t get much easier once you’re there. The consequences of those limitations are especially apparent during the three-month stretch from January to April when Maryland’s General Assembly is in session.

By all rights, Annapolis should be a transportation hub. It has its own bus system, is home to two prominent colleges, and is the seat of the governments for both Anne Arundel County and the state of Maryland. It’s centrally located within a couple hours’ drive of some of the Mid-Atlantic region’s largest cities, including Baltimore, DC, Philadelphia, Richmond, and Wilmington. Yet getting around by transit is no easy feat.

In the past, Annapolis’ transit outlook was more rosy

Annapolis is not totally devoid of transit options: the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) does offer one non-commuter frequency bus route between the Patapsco Light Rail station in southern Baltimore County and Annapolis. Several commuter bus routes run between Annapolis and Baltimore or Washington, and the University of Maryland’s Shuttle-UM has run a biweekly route to the city from College Park since 2017.

However, commuters say most of these routes don’t run frequently enough, and offer limited options for people traveling from Baltimore and DC.

Annapolis wasn’t always so inaccessible—in fact, it was one of the first state capitals in the country to have passenger rail. The Annapolis and Elk Ridge Railroad opened in 1840. And thanks largely to the Washington, Baltimore, and Annapolis Railroad and its successor, the Baltimore and Annapolis Railroad, passenger service continued up until 1950.

Since then, numerous attempts have been made to bring trains back to Maryland’s capital city, most notably as the proposed southern terminus in the original plans for Baltimore’s Light Rail system. By the time the system opened in 1992, however, those plans had been scaled back over 20 miles to Glen Burnie, largely amid fears of NIMBY opposition.

Despite some wishful thinking (like this 2018 dissertation by a University of Maryland architecture graduate student proposing a joint extension of both the Light Rail and WMATA’s Orange Line to Annapolis), that’s largely how it has stayed for the past three decades.

Annapolis transit issues even impact lawmakers and staff

In the meantime, getting to Annapolis without a car or getting stuck in traffic remains quite the challenge, especially for Maryland state legislators, their staff, and interns. Out of the 188 Delegates and Senators serving in the Maryland General Assembly (including the two current official vacancies and at least one more opening up within the next month), only one of those legislators, Delegate Robbyn Lewis, a Democrat from the 46th District representing Baltimore City, doesn’t own a car.

Annapolis has so much traffic and so little transit that it’s literally accounted for in each legislator’s budget.

“We’re in session for 90 days and that means we’re working Monday to Friday, 20 hours a day [for] three months,” said Lewis, who gave up her car in 2014 and has used ride hailing services like Lyft since she was first appointed to her seat in 2017. “Our jobs come with a housing stipend. It’s a standard rate, everyone has access to it. Not everyone uses it, some people live in Annapolis so they don’t need a housing stipend and they just go home every night.”

But for delegates and senators from more remote areas like Garrett County (about 200 miles northwest of Annapolis) and Dorchester County (about 70 miles southeast of Annapolis and across the infamously congested Chesapeake Bay Bridge), that housing stipend is essential.

“They can’t possibly go home at night so they’re more likely to make use of the stipend,” said Lewis. “Some people use it intermittently, like Brooke [Lierman, like Lewis, a Democrat from the 46th District]: she has small children so she goes home most every night. But on nights where she has to stay, like if we’re up until midnight or something, then she may take advantage of the housing stipend for a night or two here and there.”

Legislative staffers aren’t quite as lucky: they have to pay for their own housing and gas. “I don’t get reimbursed for anything,” said Sarian Holt, who lives in Baltimore but works as the Legislative Director for Delegate Kirill Reznik of the 39th District representing upper Montgomery County (Full disclosure: Holt is my sister). “The Delegates can get reimbursed for gas and mileage, I don’t. And given that it’s about 40 miles each way: during (the legislative) session, I’m filling up my gas tank at least twice a week.”

Inconveniently, the legislative session is also when Holt’s average commute time tends to increase as well. “During the interim (the nine-month gap from April to January between legislative sessions), when I can adjust what time I go in and out, I can do it in about 45-50 minutes,” Holt said. “If I get stuck in light traffic, it goes up to about an hour, rush hour it’s about an hour and a half. During the session, it’s about an hour and 10 minutes on average.”

This student has successfully used transit…

One person who has regularly taken a bus to Annapolis is Olivia Delaplaine, the Legislative Director for Delegate Vaughn Stewart of the 19th District in Montgomery County. Delaplaine was still a student at the University of Maryland in College Park last spring when she interned for another Montgomery County Delegate, Jheanelle Wilkins of the 20th District, which meant she was able to take advantage of the relatively new Shuttle-UM route to Annapolis.

“The SGA, the student government at the University of Maryland, got the funding for a shuttle to Annapolis on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” said Delaplaine, who did also carpool for much of the session. “That was almost entirely used by students who were interns going to work those days”, traditionally the most popular internship days for UMD students.

Delaplaine said that one of the side effects of Annapolis’ relative lack of public transit is that it can serve as a deterrent to advocacy groups, union members, and just plain regular citizens looking to stay involved in their state’s democracy.

“I think it’s even more of a barrier for people who just want to engage in the public process in Annapolis,” Delaplaine said. “Most of the advocacy groups that we work with, they’ll commission a bus or a van or they’ll get somebody really nice to drive all of their members out for their Annapolis lobby nights. But basically what that means is if one person can’t go or if one person’s running late or if someone on our end is running late, it puts a huge dent in their own ability to successfully advocate for their own priorities.”

What options does Annapolis have? Better buses.

Unfortunately, despite all these consequences and the climate emergency—which already regularly leads to flooding along the city’s main waterfront area—Annapolis probably isn’t getting any rail connections anytime soon. The same political inaction applies here as anywhere else in Maryland that’s not in the path of the Purple Line.

That being said, Union Station to Annapolis and Glen Burnie to Annapolis are two of the corridors currently being studied by the MTA for 2020’s Central Maryland Regional Transit Plan. Both Delaplaine and Holt say there’s plenty of room for improvement when it comes to buses in and out of Annapolis.

“I think buses are a really great option,” Delaplaine said. “I think it was a great idea that the University of Maryland or really that the SGA and the students had, to commission a bus. For interns specifically, I think it would really be great if every university could do that.”

“More direct bus routes would be nice, other than just the commuter ones,” Holt said, adding that she would love to see dedicated buses from Baltimore to Annapolis, and well as Rockville to Annapolis.

Compared to say, a joint Orange Line and Light Rail extension, bus lanes and more clearly defined bus routes might not sound all that exciting. But in terms of allowing more Marylanders to participate in the democratic process and more commuters to get to work faster, the results could be downright revolutionary.