(Washington television station NBC4 posted the following Associated Press article on its website on February 5.)
FREDERICK, Md. — The Maryland Transit Administration officials announced that they will take some old train cars out of storage to help ease overcrowding.
The transit agency also said that they’re going to buy other cars from a Chicago-area railroad.
Record-high rider ship, repair backlogs and increased federal inspection requirements have created seating shortages and forced riders on at least one morning train out of Frederick to travel up to 88 minutes without an on-board restroom, the agency said.
“We apologize for the inconvenience you have experienced and are optimistic the situation will improve in the future,” MARC managers said in a message e-mailed on Saturday to subscribers to the agency’s online newsletter.
Some interim relief is expected by the end of this week, when the first of six coaches that were built in the 1950s and retired more than a year ago are put back into service on the Brunswick and Camden lines, MTA spokeswoman Kathy Ginter said.
Those 85-seat “heritage” cars will be run until late summer or early fall, when MARC plans to start using 12 double-deck cars it is acquiring from the Chicago-area Metra commuter rail system, Ginter said. The double-deck cars seat 130, she said.
While the heritage cars may be less “cosmetically attractive,” than modern coaches, they provide more leg room between seats, Ginter said. “Some of the passengers actually prefer these cars,” she said.
Average daily MARC ridership rose about 4 percent last year, reaching a record-high 23,636 boardings per day for the last six months of 2002, Ginter said.
Compounding the crowding is the fact that five double-deck and three single-level cars are out of service, awaiting repairs to damage suffered in collisions dating to the summer of 2000. Five more cars are out of service each week, on average, for safety inspections under federal rules that were stiffened in 2001, Ginter said.
Those were among the factors that forced four MARC trains to run one coach short on Friday, resulting in inadequate seating, the agency said.
The problems persisted this week on the Brunswick Line, which carries commuters into Washington from Frederick and Martinsburg, W.Va. Two of the nine morning and 11 evening trains were still running one coach short on Tuesday, Ginter said.