The planned MARC system expansion won?t meet current rider demand until 2010, and will cost $3.9 billion over the next 28 years ? though inflation and changing costs could drive that number up.
“It?s a situation where we?re behind the eight ball. People are standing, and we?re short seats in the short term,” said Henry Kay, the Maryland Transit Administration?s deputy administrator for planning and engineering. “For the first few years, we?re in battle to provide enough seats. What starts to happen is the capital investments we make come online and we get big chunks of seats.”
The three-decade-long plan looks to add 4,000 seats systemwide by 2010, increasing capacity from 27,000 seats to 31,000. That would beenough to cover MARC?s current estimated daily ridership of 30,500 commuters.
The first expansion will occur over the next nine months and add two evening trains and weekend trains to the Penn Line and a mid-day train on the Camden line at an initial cost of $10 million, with annual costs of $6 million, according to the plan.
Total capital costs for the projects are estimated at $3.9 billion in 2007 dollars, including $2.9 billion for the Penn line by 2035, $409 million for the Camden line and $531 million for the Brunswick line.
The figure may seem large now but may be reasonable over the long term, said Wes Guckert, president of The Traffic Group Inc., a Baltimore-based transportation planning firm. Guckert compared the MARC expansion to the proposed Corridor Cities Transitway, a light rail-type system between Germantown and Shady Grove in the Washington area, estimated at $700 million.
“When you look at building a MARC train heavy rail system, over 28 years, that does not sound out of line with building a new system,” he said.
MTA also aims to make the trains run on time. On-time performance during fiscal 2007 stood at 89 percent on the Brunswick and Penn lines, and 91 percent on the Camden line, according to MTA data. The plan looks to improve reliability to 95 percent or better, and cut times between trains to 15 minutes on the Penn Line and 20 minutes on the Camden and Brunswick lines.
“That?s a huge psychological advantage to encourage MARC ridership,” Guckert said. “The things that are most important to transit riders is reliability and convenience.”
More information
To view the Maryland Transit Administration?s complete 28-year plan to expand the MARC system, visit www.mtamaryland.com/marc%20plan%20full.pdf
