FREDERICK, Md. — The first passenger trains to embark from this city in a half-century have begun delivering commuters to Washington, further enhancing Frederick’s status as a booming exurb of the nation’s capital, the Baltimore Sun reports.
This week’s launch of MARC rail service here provides Maryland’s second-largest city with another link to the District of Columbia, whose suburbs have been expanding into once-rural areas.
“To Washington D.C.” reads the new sign on the platform of the red-brick train station where commuters were being dropped off yesterday at sunrise. The service offers three early-morning trains – the one-way fare is $5.75 for the 80-minute trip – and three returns.
Being pulled increasingly into Washington’s gravity is something local officials seem to accept – with some reservations. Forty-two percent of the city’s work force commutes out of town, mostly to Washington, Montgomery County and Baltimore. The rail link has the obvious benefit of getting road-weary commuters out of their cars and easing congestion on Interstate 270 between Frederick County and Washington.
But there’s also a wistful sense among residents that it would be nice if more Frederick County residents worked closer to where they lived. “We don’t want to be just another bedroom community,” said County Commissioner Jan Gardner. “I’d like it if more people who live here also worked here. I think it makes for a better quality of life.”
Gardner stressed that she supported the new line, but that she believes residents become more invested in their communities when not commuting out of town.
Frederick County’s population grew 30 percent during the 1990s, to more than 195,000 residents. Some new arrivals were fleeing higher taxes and pricey real estate in Washington and other cities. Many work in the Washington area but live in historic downtown Frederick or in one of the new residential developments outside town.
Historically, Frederick has identified at least as much with Baltimore, connected directly by Interstate 70, as with Washington. But that changed during the past 15 years, as Washington’s suburbs pushed beyond Montgomery County. Now, with the new train service, “We’re locked into Washington,” Gardner said.
Washington commuters are the targeted clientele of the extended MARC line, which opened Monday. Frederick hadn’t had passenger trains since the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad more than 50 years ago, according to the Maryland Transit Administration.
The new service is a 13.5-mile extension of the Brunswick line that adds two new stations: one downtown with no dedicated parking, and one with 800 free spaces outside of town. Federal dollars paid for $44 million of the $56 million construction cost; the state paid the rest.
The rail line will make life easier for Frederick-based commuters such as Dawn Downing, an accountant who works in Montgomery County. Yesterday, she dropped her car at the repair shop for a tuneup, grabbed a newspaper and took a seat in the double-decker train for the hourlong trip to Rockville.
Maizie Watkins, a retired laboratory administrator, was so enthusiastic about the new service that she brought a video camera to film the departing trains. “It’s going to be a boon for Frederick,” said Watkins, who has lived here for 46 years and plans to take the train to Washington for shopping and sightseeing.
Asked why she didn’t drive there on I-270, Watkins shook her head and said, “Oh my, you don’t want to get near it.”
Local economic development officials are hoping for a ripple effect from drawing people to the downtown station, which sits near Carroll Creek in an area where old town homes blend with vacant buildings.
“It’s a largely underutilized area, a peripheral area,” said Richard Griffin, director of the Greater Frederick Development Corp., a quasi-public agency.
He said he hopes the station will be surrounded by new shops, businesses, houses and a hotel.