(The following story by Sebastian Montes appeared on The Gazette website on April 9.)
BRUNSWICK, Md. — State transit officials have outlined a series of upgrades for MARC’s Brunswick rail line that they hope will result in increased ridership and a possible extension into Northern Virginia.
Diane Ratcliff, director of planning for the Maryland Transit Administration, told the Montgomery County Planning Board about the details of the MARC Growth and Investment Plan, a sweeping 30-year overhaul of the entire commuter rail system, during a meeting on March 27.
Riders will see upgrades along the Brunswick line — which runs from Union Station in Washington, D.C., through Montgomery and Frederick counties and on to Martinsburg, W.Va. — by 2010.
Minor improvements are already under way, including aesthetic touchups at stations, new train cars and environmentally friendly diesel locomotives, onboard wireless Internet access and some updated seating.
The plan sets a goal of eventually tripling ridership statewide. The 75-mile rail line currently carries 7,000 riders each business day.
‘‘We want to carry more people greater distances … and be able to give people the options they need to travel by train,” Ratcliff told the Planning Board, noting the plan is aimed at adding ‘‘some of the features we need to just spruce up the whole Brunswick line service.”
Under the growth plan, 200 seats will be added to Brunswick trains by 2010; 3,800 more will be added by 2015; another 8,400 by 2020; and 7,000 more by 2035.
At MARC’s Germantown station, the improvement plan means a new parking garage by 2015. At Metropolitan Grove in Gaithersburg, it means turning the small stop into a mass transit hub — a junction and changeover point for riders of the MARC line and the planned Corridor Cities Transitway, a rapid-bus or light-rail line that will connect the Shady Grove Metro station and Clarksburg.
And for the entire Brunswick line, the plan calls for adding a third track by 2035 and possibly extending service past Union Station and into Northern Virginia, Ratcliff said.
One challenge MTA faces in revamping the commuter rail is that the tracks are shared with CSX and Amtrak rail operations. Another consideration is funding. With the first round of improvements covered by the state’s $400 million transportation fund, budgeting for the longer-term work will begin before next fall, Ratcliff said.
‘‘All of the plans and some of the projections of what could be available rely on funding being available, cooperation of the railroads — everything falling into place — and then a balance of the resources that we can find between and among the three lines,” Ratcliff said.
The plan is funded through 2010 out of Maryland’s transportation fund. Work beyond that, however, is ‘‘in flux” pending fallout from the General Assembly’s repeal of the computer services tax, Ratcliff said in an interview.
Another consideration, she told the Planning Board in March, is that ‘‘we have to be aware that inflation is possibly going to change that. Well, it won’t ‘possibly’ — it will change that.”
The board’s challenge includes deciding how the MARC improvements relate to the update of several local master plans — especially the one for White Flint, which outlines substantial growth in housing and jobs.
The state’s current plan for a new stop north of the Boyds station by 2020 might not make as much sense as a new stop in White Flint, Planning Board Chairman Royce Hanson said.
‘‘We wouldn’t anticipate even by 2030, ’40, ’50 a lot of growth at Dickerson or Boyds,” he said. ‘‘We would have additional growth in Germantown and there will be additional growth in Gaithersburg, and the area between Rockville and Kensington.”
There is already debate in the community as to whether a new Kensington-area station should be somewhere along Randolph Road or farther south.
Because White Flint’s master plan needs to go to the County Council by this fall for approval, Hanson asked if MTA could respond to that question in no more than three months.