WASHINGTON — The 5:20 p.m. train to Penn Station in Baltimore doesn’t wait for passengers who arrive late at Washington’s Union Station, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
But riders have other choices. They can go to the next train in line. The MARC commuter-rail system operated by the Maryland Transit Authority also offers trains at 5:33 p.m., 5:52 p.m., 6:35 p.m. and so on. The silver trains, each pulled by a diesel engine, are lined up on parallel tracks like beasts of burden waiting for the day’s work to begin.
The 5:33 p.m. train leaves the station with few vacant seats. It has seven passenger cars, each holding at least 90 people.
The inside of the cars is clean, but with so many riders packed into a small space, it’s a bit hot. Finding the elbowroom to work on a laptop would be difficult. Most passengers pass the time on the 65-minute trip by reading, sleeping or gazing out the windows into the darkness. Most are wearing business attire. They look to be the types of people who have cars at home but don’t want to use them on business days.
Eight stops are on the way. By the second, an attendant has made her way from the back of the train to the front. She checked the monthly passes, validated daily passes with a ticket puncher and sold tickets to latecomers who would have missed the train if they had stopped to buy them. For passengers who buy tickets inside Union Station at MARC’s machines, which are as easy to use as an ATM and accept credit cards, the fare is $5.75. Those who buy from the attendant pay $8.75.
In Dallas-Fort Worth, the Trinity Railway Express commuter line is a more recent example of a national trend toward commuter rail. On the East Coast, many commuters use Amtrak, but MARC and the Virginia Railway Express offer low-priced alternatives and service to many cities that Amtrak passes by.
The rail service in the Washington, D.C., area isn’t fundamentally different from what’s offered in North Texas. There’s just a lot more of it.
What sets the East Coast operators apart from the Trinity Railway Express is not the cleanliness of the cars, the friendliness of the train employees or even the usefulness of the ticket machines.
It’s the volume.
A glance at MARC’s weekday schedule for its three commuter-rail lines — one from Baltimore’s Penn Station, one from Baltimore’s Camden Yards and one from Brunswick, Md. — shows 26 trains a day arriving at Washington before 10 a.m. They do more runs before 10 a.m. than the Trinity Railway Express does all day.
But the next generation of Texas workers may be commuting with that kind of frequency in Fort Worth, Dallas and Denton. If they miss a train, they could simply walk over to the next track.