Officials, residents discuss MARC train expansion

Jan. 14—Lawmakers and residents gathered at the C. Burr Artz Library in Frederick on Saturday to discuss MARC train transportation in Frederick County.

Ben Ross, chair of Maryland Transit Opportunities Coalition, said the end goal is always to get a statewide rail transit system. Expanding to a reliable and flexible system in Frederick is step 1 of that plan, he said.

Brunswick Mayor Nathan Brown, District 3 state Del. Ken Kerr, and Trains Not Tolls member Shoshanna Staffone sat on a panel during the discussion.

Trains Not Tolls is a group that wants to address the shortage of commuter trains and expand their service.

Currently, for the Brunswick Line — which connects cities such as Frederick and Martinsburg, West Virgina, to Washington, D.C., — has three morning trains and three night trains running. The trains run on a 9-to-5 schedule during the weekdays, with no trains in the afternoon or weekends.

The MARC Cornerstone Plan Implementation Study looked at how these services could be expanded, as well as their costs.

Kerr quickly reviewed main points, but pointed out the challenges of expansion, with the main one being CSX. CSX is a freight railroad corporation that owns nearly all the tracks in the state.

"[CSX has] been very difficult to negotiate with ...," Kerr said. "CSX regards [passenger rail] as just a bit of an annoyance. It's certainly not a priority."

Maryland only owns 3.2 miles of track in the whole state, which is between Brunswick and Frederick, Trains Not Tolls member Frank Cantrell said.

Cantrell spoke about what he would like to see in potential funding to expand services, like building a third parallel track in a common bottleneck area between Point of Rocks and Gaithersburg. Freight trains often get stuck on an incline there, blocking commuter trains from getting to their destinations, he said.

Additionally, he said, he would like to see a platform built at the Point of Rocks station to allow more passenger trains to stop there and therefore increase the flexibility of the train times. Now, only four passenger trains can stop there, he said, but an additional platform could bring that number up to seven.

The idea of expanding commuter train services was also talked about in tandem with a public-private partnership plan introduced under Gov. Larry Hogan's administration that would add extra lanes on I-270 and I-495. With the addition of new lanes would come tolls that with variable rates.

Staffone said she's fighting for more reliable commuter trains because some people can't afford the tolls under the P3 plan.

She said she calculated how much it would cost to pay these tolls annually, assuming a minimum toll, one way, of $10 and a maximum toll of $25.

With a $10 toll, it would cost roughly $5,000 annually if a person drove to work and back, five times a week, minus two weeks of vacation. A $25 toll would cost roughly $12,500 annually.

"I want people to be able to go when they need to go, shift workers to show up on their shift, be able to get paid when they need to get paid," she said. "Otherwise, we're going to have to stop driving if the tolls go up. People are going to have to quit their jobs because they won't be able to go because all the secondary roads and tertiary roads are going to be packed."

Brown said Brunswick has a particular stake in the railroad and MARC conversation since Brunswick is a railroad town. Expanding MARC service would be "transformational," he said, since it could draw in new residents and tourists.

"One of the major things with this is the world doesn't fit into a Monday-through-Friday, 9-to-5 bubble," he said. "There's people that do have shift work or, not even just related to a job, but want to, you know, go out on the weekends and see other places and travel around."

Ross said there have been plenty of studies on MARC trains in Frederick. One study even lasted 15 years. Now, it's time for action, he said.

"As far as going between Frederick County through Montgomery into D.C., this has been studied. It's something that can be done in bite-sized pieces. And we want to take the first bite," he said.

Follow Clara Niel on Twitter: @clarasniel