(The Associated Press circulated the following article on January 11.)
BALTIMORE, Md. — Four MARC stations will close later this year, the Maryland Transit Administration said today.
Effective March 6, trains will bypass the Boyds and Dickerson stops on the Brunswick line, as well as the Camden line’s Jessup and St. Denis stations. Maryland Transportation Secretary Robert L. Flanagan said the average daily ridership of the four stations combined is just 41 passengers, the lowest on the MARC system.
“These four stations simply don’t generate the ridership necessary to justify the investment required to keep them operating and safe,” Flanagan said.
Flanagan noted that each is within four miles of another station, and that the commuter railroad “must put its limited resources where the ridership is.”
The MTA is expected to save more than $1 million a year by shutting the stations.
Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan, a Democratic candidate for governor, criticized Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. for closing the stations.
“Passengers have been using rail service at the Boyds and Dickerson stations since the 1880s,” he said. “But instead of supporting efforts to get more people out of their cars and onto public transportation, Governor Ehrlich is pursuing a policy to do just the opposite.”
The Montgomery County Council voted last month to ask the MTA not to close Boyds and Dickerson. Of the 19 weekday trains to and from Washington on the Brunswick line, seven call at those stations. Lawmakers said ridership would be higher if the MTA did a better job of advertising and ran more frequent trains.
On the Camden line, Jessup is served by only a single train in each direction. St. Denis — where trains have been stopping since before the Civil War — gets six trains.