MDOT partners with Delaware, Virginia to expand MARC service

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The Maryland Department of Transportation has partnered with Delaware and Virginia to potentially expand MARC train service to Newark and Alexandria, Gov. Wes Moore‘s office announced Thursday.

Through the Maryland Transit Administration, the MARC commuter rail serves people in the Baltimore and Washington metropolitan area, going as far east as Perryville, and as far west as Martinsburg, West Virginia.

Expanding the MARC train’s reach further beyond Maryland’s borders is part of a push to transform the local rail system into a regional transit provider.

The partnerships are part of a commitment to work with neighboring states to increase transit access across the region, Moore, a Democrat, said in a press release.

“The partnerships outlined in these agreements will help us bring together greater options to thousands of potential transit riders,” Moore said.

Extending service south of Union Station, where the three MARC lines converge, has long been a goal of jurisdictions in the region, according to the Maryland Department of Transportation.

Maryland Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld said the agreements will help Maryland deliver “seamless transit service across state lines.”

DJ Stadtler, executive director of the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority, said the state’s partnership with Maryland is an important step to reducing congestion on Virginia roads and highways.

Providing MARC service to Alexandria, though, is contingent on the completion of a rail bridge spanning the Potomac River and other track projects in Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia, according to Moore’s office.

The department partnered with the Delaware Transit Corp. to try to close the commuter rail gap in Cecil County and connect the MARC lines to southeastern Pennsylvania’s transportation system.

The MARC train system comprises three lines — the Penn Line, which runs along Amtrak’s northeast corridor, and Brunswick and Camden lines, part of the CSX rail network. The Penn Line, which runs between Union Station and Perryville, is by far the busiest.

About 258,000 people rode the MARC train in November, the most recent month for which ridership data was available on the Maryland Transit Administration’s website.

MARC ridership plummeted — from nearly 760,000 monthly riders in February 2020 to fewer than 30,000 in April 2020 — after the country went into lockdown at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ridership numbers still haven’t fully recovered.