MARC to suspend express train (corrected)
CORRECTION: April 19 is the date of the change.
The Maryland Transit Administration is planning to suspend its 7:21 a.m. Penn Line express train from Union Station to Penn Station April 19 to accommodate track work Amtrak will be performing around Bowie.
The move has prompted grumbling among some of the regular riders of that train, but MARC director John Hovatter said there's little the MTA can do about it. Amtrak, after all, owns the tracks, and MARC must bend to operational necessities.
Hovatter said that even if MARC had continued to run the 7:21 a.m. train it would have been unable to do so as an express. He said riders of that train will have two alternatives: the 506 operating nine minutes earlier and the 408 running 16 minutes later. Hovatter noted that the 506 makes only three stops between Washington and Baltimore.
"We are desperately trying to get another train out there," he said.
Richard Layman, a MARC rider who commutes from Washington to Towson using train and bus, said the trip will add 21 minutes to a commute that already takes him two hours, 15 minutes. Layman said at least one other MARC rider is circulating a petition protesting the move, but he sounded resigned when told it was an Amtrak matter.
Hovatter said the track work will take all summer and that the MTA does not know now whether the chnage will be permanent. He said he wasn't sure what a petition could accomplish. "This is Amtrak's necessary track work, it is a fact of life," he said.
Layman said that's what has him concerned. "Lots of times these things are seized upon to make permanent changes," he said.
