Government vans soon may be ferrying about a half-dozen Fort Meade employees between the installation and train stations in hopes of the service expanding to carry hundreds or thousands in the near future.
“If we and the state are encouraging mass transit, then we should have a ride from the MARC [train] station and take them very close to their place of work,” said Bert Rice, the fort’s privatization officer.
The fort is creating a pilot shuttle program to take workers between the Anne Arundel installation and MARC train stations in Odenton and Savage.
Fort officials are seeking employees who receive a federal subsidy for using mass transit and have schedules compatible with potential service times.
If successful, the program would start a larger version catering to the 5,000 new workers coming to the fort via Base Realignment and Closure in 2011.
The hope is scores of BRAC employees will use the train and shuttle rather than drive on roads that many say will be congested. County and state officials say the roads around Fort Meade will not be ready by 2011 to handle the influx.
Col. Daniel Thomas, Fort Meade’s commanding officer, told state legislators in October that he would use Army funds and services to operate a shuttle service that if successful could either be contracted out to a private company or receive assistance from the state.
Fort Meade is more likely to see a commuter population, as a bulk of the BRAC jobs are from the Defense Information Systems Agency in Arlington, Va.
Most of DISA’s employees live in Northern Virginia, and could feasibly take trains from Virginia to Odenton, and surveys of DISA employees say a majority would prefer to commute over taking the 60-mile round trip.
Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford, which will see 7,000 new jobs from BRAC, does not offer a similar service to MARC stations, and has no immediate plans to do so, said Pat McClung, an APG spokeswoman.
“We haven’t seen an increase of a commuter population yet,” McClung said.
But a shuttle can be arranged in advance if a large group of employees or soldiers are coming to the installation, she said.
For Fort Meade’s shuttle to work, the fort needs to fill half the seats, and is still trying to do so. Rice said he believes next month more employees will respond to surveys and notices, with the service operable by February.
“It’s evolving,” Rice said. “The trick is to see when they arrive at the train station.”
