I believe the only reason an apology was issued was due to a) the state officials aboard the train and b) the media coverage. While I believe that all companies should take care of their customers and acknowledge their mistakes, come on. What's next, the MTA apologizing for every car their buses cut off? Trains break down, buses break down.

The conductor on MARC # 538 said on the PA that they didn't stop at Odenton due to "track conditions". Really? What conditions would those be?

By the way, Odenton has a platform that allows ALL cars on the train to open at platform level when the train brakes properly, so MARC # 538 must've missed its "mark" considerably. But hey, the A/C was working in my car.

This is getting ridiculous, seriously. Are incidents like these nationwide or does the Baltimore-Washington area have no clue how to run rail transit?

I lived in Europe for a year a never had one incident. Not even anything longer than a 5 minute delay.

mind your head

I'm glad MARC and Amtrak are finally getting their feet held to the fire. I spent two summers in DC interning. At least once a week, there was a major delay, making my 1 hour and 15 min. commute into more than 3 hours. Delays were the easy part. Missing stations, train cancellations, and overcrowding were the norm.

The best part was when the conductors would wedge themselves through all the passengers who had to stand and collect money and tickets. Cows have travelled better across rail tracks than the Baltimore-to-DC commuters.

I now live in NY and occassionally use the Long Island Rail Road, a far more busy commuter train. However, it does not have near the problems that the Baltimore-DC trains have.

It didn't break down. It missed a stop. Think of it this way: what if the engineer had missed a signal instead?

I'm really happy to hear both Wells and Swaim-Staley were aboard. I hope it was unannounced, and they really are on these trains evaluating and taking recent events seriously.

Should be obvious by now that public transit is not a priority in this state. It is amazing that people still ride MARC at all. Unless MARC riders unite and make lots of noise, nothing will change. If you continue to accept lousy service, that is all you will get.

Dresser,

Can you provide comprehensive information on the state of the 26 new engines that were announced by Gov. O'Malley in the Spring of 2009? Such as how many are in use and on which lines. I seem to remember the Gov. stating they would all be in service by the summer of 2010. Particularly emphasizing the contract/procurement snafus created by the MTA and its administration, which have delayed deployment.

Thanks

Hey MarylandMom - do you ride the MARC Penn line to work everyday like I and thousands of other people do? There is a huge difference between buses and trains.

A train missing a stop which is miles away from the next stop is a far different issue than a bus missing a stop that's only blocks away from the next one.

A train cutting off a car, or vice-versa, is way worse than a bus cutting of a car.

Actually, the important point of this article is that the crew of the MARC train lied about the reason for missing the Odenton stop. The reason that the state officials were on the train in the first place was because of the persistent problems with highly unprofessional behavior by MARC personnel.

A train break-down on a busy commuter rail system in an important metropolitan area is a far more serious than a bus breakdown, and even buses don't break down as frequently as MARC trains do. That's the reason for all the media coverage, isn't it?

MarylandMom, your comparison between MTA buses and MARC trains is totally off-base.

When I took the MARC train this black conductor was bullying us to move even though the train was crowded and we weren't in anyone's way. Then he didn't say anything when a couple black people came on board and stood in the same spot. Yet he blocked off a seat for himself under the ruse of it being a "Work Station". That seat remained empty the enite trip..

I'm a regular MARC rider (almost every day on the 6:37am train from BWI). While the MARC has had it's problems this past week (and they have been very, very bad), I have to admit that the previous months had been pretty smooth. No major outages or delays on any of my trains.

I agree that MARC does play second fiddle to Amtrack and CSX trains. That is most annoying.

Just over an hour before this incident, I was aboard train 450, the 5:15 departure from Union Station. At New Carrollton (the only scheduled stop before Baltimore), the doors at the rear of the train failed to open (no conductor there to man them). About 10 people were prevented from disembarking. Some had to walk forward through the crowds to get help from the conductors, who arranged for an unscheduled stop at Seabrook. These passengers were left to find alternative means for getting home from there.

Mistakes and accidents can be forgivable. Intentional lying is not. And the MARC train crew intentionally lied.

Who told them to lie? A person with awareness of the situation, or as I suspect, a general culture of "It's not my fault."

OH MY... I heard there were problems on the 538. Seriously? The track conditions were bad? How is that when you are flying through and don't apply the brakes? Sounds more like someone was busy texting, sleeping or otherwise not aware of his/her surroundings.

An appology doesn't really cut it with things like this. Only action will! What if an Amtrak had just pulled out - how much damage would that have caused to the people as well as equipment?

I have to wonder, if the apathy expressed in this incident, and others recently, isn't a direct result of the MARC management style.

So, the engineer may have been daydreaming when it was time for him to apply the brakes in time for a normal stop. But, after he stopped past the station, at least there was no bad decision made AFTER that to back up, which could have produced a terrible crash involving the following train. Like what happened in Chicago years ago at the S. 22nd St. station.

I have been a Marc rider for 12 years now and I believe I have seen almost everything that can go wrong on a train short of a crash. I was on the delayed 544 last night. I thought the handling of the delay was much better than normal but the best part of the evening was watching the guy behind the Marc desk at Union Station loose his cool. He was listening to an irate customer and his final remark to him was a repeated,"Get outta my face" That was punctuated by a thumping on the counter with a hard hat. If I did that to one of my clients , I would have been fired.

two things spring to mind with regard to the incident and the comments.

1 - Amtrak owns the Northeast Corridor and operates the MARC trains. Between Seabrook and Jackson Grove (look it up) MARC trains heading north use their own track, Amtrak trains typically do not use this track. Beyond "Grove" Amtrak trains begin to use the third track for trains stopping at BWI and to clear the center track for use by southbounds and faster northbounds.

between Cheverly and Bowie, CSX trains use the NEC to access the Pope's Creek line - you say you like electricity, right?

the issue that is facing MARC and Amtrak is a matter of congestion. when the line was operated by the PRR and even in PC days, there was more traffic but there were less trains making passenger stops. the line was designed as a railroad, not a commuter shuttle.

2 - how about you live where you work. the pressures that people put on infrastructure to perform are outrageously out of scale with the task they want. if you live 70 miles from your office, do you really think that each and everyday will be smooth and uneventful?

think about the demands you are making on many various systems when you live 50, 60, 70, even 100 miles away and cut your transit times to the bone. would you expect to fly from Baltimore to Cheyenne Wyoming without some sort of delay? then why do you expect a train to be on time, all the time for a commute that could not happen if the train did not exist.

scale you expectations to the task and you might realize that your job in the city is killing the budgets of many communities and government agencies.

but hey, it's all about you.

Steve, interesting comments - although I disagree with your conclusion. Consider what it would be like if all of those MARC riders did live closer to work in DC and drove cars or rode the Metro to work. All you would get is more stress on a different part of the transportation infrastructure.

I would love to live where i work but I don't want to send my kids to DC schools and I don't want to risk my life to live within walking or biking distance of my office.

Your suggestion about living where you work is something that I agree with in priniciple but is not practical for most of us.

All we, the MARC passengers, are asking for is a reasonable level of service - not outstanding, or excellent, or even above average. An average level of competent operations and service from MARC would be better than what we get now.

Steve, according to google I live 27.7 miles from my job and my MARC commute is about 50 mins. When my commute takes me over 4 hours, I'm sorry but that is unacceptable. I can get into New York in that amount of time. Airlines are no longer going to be permitted to keep passengers stranded on the tarmac for over 2 hours, why then is MARC allowed to leave us stranded for longer? If you are not a customer of MTA you should not really be here complaining. Not only do we, the customers, pay in our taxes like everyone else, we also pay in our tickets. I paid for that lovely 4 hour commuting disaster. And if I was driving everyday, my taxes would then start paying for the higher pollution and road repairs. I am not naive enough to expect to never have a delay, and I have yet to meet a single MARC rider who is. However, we do expect some consequences for when mistakes happen.

if all those people lived where they worked, they would care about those school systems and their communities. running away to the hinterlands of Harford, Frederick, and Berkley counties does two things 1- erodes the communities that are vacanted and 2 - erodes the communities now being smothered by development. is Charles Town the quiet pastoral oasis it was 15 years ago?

it's far easier to claim you can't do something than it is to actually do it. this is why we will be suckling from the teat of big oil for decades to come. you can't live in Hagerstown and commute to DC or Baltimore suburbs with an electric car, they don't have the range nor is the recharging infrastructure in place.

i think the past week is the except to MARC's service record. but no one complains when service is decent. the Sun doesn't run "MTA excels expectations yet again"

if you want to be honest, the problems with the state of the transportation network are solely the result of the locust mentality - "if they build the highway to Valhalla, i can move there and keep my high paying city job."

the reasons people have moved to Brunswick and Charles Town have been bulldozer flat and paved with a Target and Safeway.

but no one ever wants to talk about the real issues, just complain that the train can't get it right 100% of the time while covering great distances. i can see it upsets so many that they skip the train and drive instead. wait, they don't?

Steve, your frustration level is targeted at the wrong group. I work in DC because that is currently the only place I can find a job. I live in Anne Arundel County because I can actually afford to live with a roof over my head rather than living in a tent on the street for the prices of small studio apartments in dc. If you haven't noticed the job market is quiet dim in Maryland, so unless you want me and the thousands of other MARC commuters to suckle away the states unemployment resources than you should be a little more considerate to the constant struggles we face. This is not a one time thing or an anomalous month. This has been on going for years.

You seem to keep contradicting yourself. 1) There are no posts about MARC exceeding expectations because it doesn't and hasn't. 2) The MARC commuters aren't attempting to use electric cars and don't want to hence why we take MARC we would prefer to avoid driving. 3) If we are paying for these "roads to Valhalla" then shouldn't we have the right to use them as we please? 4) what post anywhere has said anything about being 100% on time?

I think the transportation secretary is blowing this situation extremely out of proportion. I mean, if your new iPhone crashes and you lose all of your data, do you call the CEO of Apple to cry on his shoulder? No! This is an issue of people feeling entitled--the only reason such a big deal is being made over it is because state bigwigs were aboard. Assuming that Boardman's account of what happened is accurate, it seems pretty plausable. The Amtrak crew should have been up front about what really happened...but what company actually does that these days? I'm not defending the lie, I'm just being realistic.
The transportation secretary and other state officials need to realize that "stuff happens." If they think they can run their trains better than Amtrak, by all means go and do it. Otherwise, call the problems what they are, don't overexagerate them--again, things happen--and be part of the solution. I mean, if an Amtrak train missed a stop would the CEO hear about it? Probably not, at least probably not immediately. Again, I think the state transportation secretary is exagerating the situation, and I have a feeling that she does not much care for Amtrak...and probably did not much care for them even before this insident.

It's time for the Maryland
state transportation officials to grow up and start solving the problem...instead of just pointing fingers.

Steve and Michael,

Both of you seem to think that the past week's MARC problems is an anomaly and not the norm on MARC.
I assume that neither of your ride MARC daily, because if you would you would know this is not the case.
I challenge both of you to subscribe to MTA alters for the Penn Line (if not Camden and Brunswick too) and see the number of emails MARC sends about delays (keeping in mind that they only send about 2/3 of delays in emails). Then come back in two weeks and let us know if your opinion has changed.

And Michael, the MARC train missing Odenton is the equivalent of the Acela train missing New York Penn Station, yes, the CEO would hear about it! Odenton is the most used station in the system behind Union Station, it also has the longest platform. There is no excuse for missing it.

And please also note that trains overshooting stations is a regular occurrence. There are designated cars that were supposed to stop on the platform and customers in wheel chairs need them to stop accurately. Us walkers can walk up or back two or three cars, customers in wheel chairs can't. And then they might have to go up a few stations before they reach another one that is wheel chair accessible. I saw this happen regularly at BWI, then the next day the customer in the wheel chair would state how he had to go all the way to Penn Station (Halethorpe and West Baltimore are not handicap accessible) get off the train and wait for the next one that stops at BWI. Usually added 1-2 hours to his trip home.

MARC has many problems, but i think the largest problem is the unrealistic expectations of the ridership. you are traveling 30+ miles to work on an infrastructure designed in the 1890's and upgraded in the 1930's. the system was never designed for the burden it carries today. no amount of retro fitting will change the foundation - the right of way is where it is no amount of money will correct the problems of today's trends.

when MARC added the bi-level cars, did anyone consider the extra time required at stations to load and unload the passengers? doubling the capacity adds time at the station. that time cascades down the schedule. reductions in speed due to track maintenance, heat, and snow exacerbate the delays.

claiming one can only find work in DC yet can only afford Anne Arundel is a misdirection. i live in Anne Arundel and work here - i can afford it just find. there are plenty of affordable houses in good communities in Prince Georges - what's wrong with Clinton, Fort Washington, Greenbelt, Glenndale, or Riverdale?

if MARC is so bad, stop using it. seems like the notion of entitlement is alive and well and it costs $5.00 from Odenton to Union Station.

it always comes back to other's should change so i don't have to. i should be able to hop on a train and be in DC in 26 minutes and in my office by eight am. what has to happen for that to happen, everyday without fail. i'm sure it is taken care by people who live in those areas you'd never venture into after dusk.

Steve, Michael,

I do sympathize with your comments and I actually agree with you in principle but it's too far from practical reality.

The Federal government pays for it's employees to commute to DC on the MARC, the VRE, the Metro, and MTA because it knows that there is no way that they can get enough workers to live in DC and the traffic would be nightmare if public transportation is not used to bring in tens of thousands of suburban dwelling employees.
That's the reality that everyone must deal with.

MARC passengers are the least demanding of all commuters or they wouldn't still be using the MARC. How many "Type A" personalities would be riding the MARC when you have to give up total control of your commute to AMTRAK/MARC. The MARC passengers simply what the basic amount of service that they bought their tickets for and that our tax dollars are subsidizing. That's it.

Just my 2cents here Steve...

I don't commute because I enjoy it. I commute because I need a job and cannot afford to live any closer to it. It is not a misdirection rather a direct retort to your misdirection away from the issues at hand. Which is a service employee lying to his customers. Not a cool thing.

MARC provides a service that on the whole - in my experience - has been mostly positive. The deal with lying to the passengers to cover an obvious error is not a positive experience and is in need of correction.

For those here who think the service is not so good, relax a little. It is not perfect - don't expect it to be. Life comes with bumps as does the MARC. Yeah, it isn't too much fun when things break down. Guess what, my car does that too. I don't yell at the car or blame me for the problem - I fix it and get on with the game.

@steve and Michael,
While I agree it may be better to live closer to work, I, like many others, cannot afford to live closer to or in DC. I really wish I could but it isn't going to happen. I think in the DC area it is somewhat of a utopian dream for many to live where they work - the salaries just don't match the cost of living. And lets not even bring up crime and school issues in DC because that would be stating the obvious. So many of us rely on public transportation - which is common in so many other places around the world. Even if we lived in DC we'd be relying on Metro which has it's own set of issues. I may work exactly 21 miles from my office but I only live 5 miles from the MARC station and work a few blocks from Union Station. And yes, I am planning to buy an EV if I can. I'm sure there are many others out there who don't have much of a choice.

The outrage stems from the fact that most MARC riders would like a somewhat reliable and safe way to get to work and home. The events of the last few weeks, and beyond, have shown MARC is incapable of providing that. Whether we are trapped in an overheated, disabled train, or a train misses a station, it's just not safe. What if you had a child in daycare and needed to but couldn't get home? What if you had a medical emergency on the train and there was no way to get help? Or imagine if this distracted engineer had missed a signal rather than a station. It could have been disastrous. Have you heard of the Metrolink accident in CA last year? or the accident in Chase MD in 1987?