MARC my words by Adam Fagen licensed under Creative Commons.

The Washington region has two commuter rail systems funneling riders from Maryland and Virginia into the District. But currently, those systems — MARC in Maryland and VRE in Virginia — both terminate at Union Station, and don’t continue into the other state.

The notion of integrating MARC and VRE into a “through-running” system has been a perennial area of interest amongst transit advocates and officials in the region. With through-running service, trains from Maryland and Virginia would continue through Washington to the other jurisdiction. Just as Metro allows riders to travel from Northern Virginia to the Maryland suburbs and vice versa in a one-seat ride, commuters from further out in Virginia could commute to Baltimore, for instance.

Last April, the Maryland Department of Transportation and the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority reached an agreement taking the first step in such integration, allowing MARC trains to continue as far south as Alexandria. Officials from both states say they’ll work together to make this service possible, but have provided no timeline. Running this service will require several infrastructure projects, particularly the Long Bridge capacity improvement project, and measures to address differing platform heights.

Officials say through-running trains would “expand economic opportunities” in the region. But how many people would this connection actually serve? Projections by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments state that MARC-VRE through-running service could add over 16,000 weekday rides by 2030. But this assumed full through-running service, while in the initial stage of current plans, trains coming from Maryland would continue past Union Station only as far as Alexandria’s King Street station.

A close look at census data gives us a better idea just how many people might use the initial through-running trains by comparing how many people who live near a MARC line work in the areas that would be served.

Data source

US Census data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics program are available via OnTheMap, a geospatial platform that allows users to view how many people work in a given area. It’s possible to perform a “paired area analysis” to count how many people from a specific area are employed in another specific area. These can be defined either by legal boundaries, such as municipalities, census tracks, or ZIP codes, or by manually drawn buffers.

Radii

When evaluating transit ridership, a half-mile radius is the commonly accepted figure, because it correlates with how far people are generally willing to walk. However, MARC and VRE are park-and-ride oriented systems, with the densest (and thus most walkable) points being at the ends of the Penn and Camden lines in Baltimore, Union Station and L’Enfant Plaza in Washington, and Crystal City and Alexandria in Northern Virginia. Thus, it’s worth casting a wider net on the origin end, looking at a 5-mile radius. Assuming that riders are not likely to walk more than a half-mile on the destination end, this analysis looked at a half-mile radius of the three stations south of Union Station that would be served by an initial through-running MARC schedule to Alexandria.

The overall job market

In total, there are 87,901 jobs within a half-mile radius of VRE’s stations at L’Enfant Plaza, Crystal City south of 15th Street, and King Street in Alexandria. L’Enfant is the largest center, but Crystal City and King Street each have healthy employment concentrations.

Who’s commuting now?

Pre-pandemic, there were approximately 38,000 daily MARC riders on weekdays. Of these riders, 14,359 boarded at Union Station, the majority presumably during outbound commutes, with 2,496 riders from Union Station on the Brunswick Line, 1,949 on the Camden Line, and 9,464 on the Penn Line.

Commutes via MARC to the study area are evidently low within the conventional half-mile radius on the origin end. Looking at the Penn Line from Penn Station south, fewer than 1,000 people are counted as employed at L’Enfant Plaza, Crystal City, or Alexandria. Expanding this range on the origin end to a 5-mile radius, however, considerably more riders are employed in these areas. Notably, this overlaps with the hypothetical 5-mile commute-sheds for the Camden and Brunswick lines.

Fortunately, OnTheMap allows a user to create a buffer that excludes the area of overlap. Removing the overlap between lines, and isolating stations within Baltimore City to their own area, reveals the following home-to-work numbers:

  • Brunswick Line: 5,661
  • Penn Line excluding Baltimore: 2,347
  • Camden Line excluding Baltimore: 2,674
  • Baltimore proper, within a mile of Baltimore Penn, Camden, and West Baltimore stations: 84

This suggests that there is healthy demand from MARC’s service area to L’Enfant Plaza, Crystal City, and Alexandria. However, caveats are in order, and through-running alone might not be enough to attract new ridership. For one, because all three destinations are accessible by Metro today, many riders may already be riding MARC and transferring to Metro at Union Station or New Carrollton. Still, each of these nodes is a prominent employment hub, and Crystal City in particular is poised to grow with the ongoing National Landing redevelopment. Further, the Metro trip is inconvenient, requiring two transfers in most cases. A one-seat ride would be far more convenient.

This analysis also has limited parameters. The DC region retains high telework rates; many people picked up by this analysis likely commute just a few days a week or not at all (though faster, more direct commutes could encourage return-to-office trends). On the other hand, a job-based analysis may understate demand: through-running enables leisure trips such as from Virginia to Camden Yards and Maryland to Old Town Alexandria, or other non-work trips.

Ultimately, in order to attract additional ridership, frequencies will likely need to grow. As service stands today, particularly on the Brunswick and Camden lines, MARC remains a largely peak-oriented service, with irregular schedules. The Brunswick Line has no off-peak or weekend service, and only nine inbound trains. The Camden Line has just ten inbound trains.

Nonetheless, the fact that over 10,000 people from the Maryland suburbs are employed near L’Enfant Plaza, Crystal City, and King Street means there is a strong opportunity for MARC to grow ridership. But just providing a one-seat ride isn’t enough. Growing frequency — which depends on opening additional capacity or reaching agreements with freight carriers — is key.