MARC Express Service
At least part of the West Baltimore Project is predicated on the ability of MARC to run a true express service to Washington’s Union Station from the West Baltimore Station (with stops at BWI and Baltimore Penn Station). So the question is often asked, can half-hour trip times even be achieved? And if so, how would they be done? This is a quick primer on how a such a service could become reality.
Firstly, it’s important to remember what is being proposed for a MARC express service - specifically, just four stops. These stops would not take the place of existing service, but be additional to it.
The ultimate goal for a true express service would be one express train per hour, 6am - 8pm, every workday - so approximately 28 additional trips total per day. This would require the reshuffling, purchase or renting or two, or possibly even three, additional train sets. For the economic justification of the relatively small outlays required to obtain those train sets, see both the Overview section of the website, as well as the Roadmap Report.
However, at least initially, the proposal is only for a Pilot MARC Express Service, to consist of just four train trips each way in the morning, and the same in the afternoon - principally to test the market, gather data, create demand and foster an “equity” constituency for the highly sought-after (by Amtrak) B&P Tunnel redo.
On the question of trip time, and can MARC hit that 30-minute trip window, look no further than MARC first EVER peak-direction express service between Washington and Baltimore. Run for the first time on August 30th, train #536 leaves Union Station at 5:13pm, arrives at BWI exactly 23 minutes later, drives right PAST the West Baltimore MARC Station at 30 minutes, and arrives at Baltimore Penn Station at exactly 40 minutes on the button, a 35% savings in trip time over the normal hour trip between Penn and Union.
Here’s just one way a full service - one that stops at West Baltimore! - could happen with MARC.
Equipment
From the West Baltimore station to Union Station is approximately 34 miles. Simple math tells us that to travel that distance in a half-hour would require an average speed of 70 mph. Including the time spent moving more slowly approaching and leaving BWI, and at the platform, along with other mandatory slow-down sections, the trains would need to be able to maintain a speed of at least 85 mph on the faster sections of the trip. A quick look at the spec sheets for some of MARC’s existing equipment confirms both existing engines and coaches wouldn’t have a problem reaching and sustaining at those speeds.
First, there’s MARC’s Siemens SC-44 Chargers, 8 of which were delivered in 2017. They have a top speed of 125 mph and would have no problem pulling 6 or even 8-coach trains on this line at the speed needed.
Then there’s the MARC IV multi-level coaches. The State of Maryland purchased 54 of them in 2014. They have a top speed of 125 mph, and a maximum service speed of 100 mph, well more than would be needed to run the desired half-hour express trains. Some of these MARC IVs are already running on the Penn Line.
There are, of course, other options for MARC equipment, including even renting spare train sets from other transit organizations, and even Amtrak. At the end of the day though, the two key takeaways are:
1) Express MARC service can be run with existing MARC-owned equipment on existing Penn Line tracks.
2) Facilitating that service is not a prohibitivly-difficult logistical problem, but rather a thorny political one of priorities.
Scheduling Window
Additionally, it’s often asserted that there is no additional capacity on the Penn Line with which to run more MARC trains. Or even if such capacity exists, Amtrak would never allow MARC to use it. Leaving aside the latter assertion as a political problem that presumably could be handled by Maryland’s powerful delegation of federal elected leaders, the former assertion - about capacity - is worth exploring. And we did - and came out with a clear window in the schedule that we confirmed visually by observing train traffic in and out of the B&P tunnel on multiple days (pre-Covid pandemic):
Both of these schedule windows would allow the MARC Express ample time to avoid any conflict with the most important Amtrak train - the Acela.
Capacity Increases
The last thing to consider in a discussion of MARC Express is how to facilitate capacity increases on the Penn Line, so as to create ample space for both MARC and Amtrak, and allow for a more complete hourly express service to run throughout the day.
The first and most obvious option - and maybe even most likely at this point - is a replacement of the B&P Tunnel. Even though the scope of that tunnel was recently, and surprisingly, cut in half, Maryland Transportation Secretary Slater was quick to trumpet that 30-minute MARC Express trains would be the biggest benefit Maryland would realize from that construction - albeit 12 to 15 years from now.
To be clear, even Amtrak acknowledges that 30-minute trips between Baltimore and Washington are going to have to be from the West Baltimore station to make that time. The graphic just below comes from Amtrak’s B&P Tunnel Replacement Project website home page, under the “Time Savings” tab:
However, what if that $5 billion project doesn’t get funded this decade? Or what if, now that it’s just two tunnels instead of four in scope, there ends up not being enough capacity for Amtrak to easily agree to give away that small amount of capacity MARC needs in order to run additional express trains. In short, what if, five years from now, we’re still in the same place with no hope of increasing capacity?
Well, there’s one other (infinitely cheaper) option to consider: a realignment of platforms (and some track work) at the BWI Rail Station. Doing so would have the potential to increase capacity on the Penn Line by as much as a third - since two-tracking in the 9 miles around BWI Rail Station is perhaps the biggest Penn Line bottleneck outside of the B&P Tunnel. The EIS is already approved for a full $544 million project at BWI Rail Station to solve that problem. (Some say the actual costs could top $1 billion.) But $1 billion (or even $544 million) is a big number in a constrained fiscal environment, and the funding is not yet there for that. But another option exists for a slimmed-down version of that project - a “skinny” project if you will - that could achieve similar objectives for a third of the cost.
In short, just focusing on getting in place a working platform for that middle track by swapping the placement of the far westernmost track and the existing westernmost platform, could achieve many of the same objectives for a fraction of the cost.
Moreover, if you look at even the cost for the full project in the context of what type of economic revitalization is possible in West Baltimore as a result, and what future contributions to, and savings for, tax coffers might be, you begin to see that there’s compelling economic multiplier rationales that argue for this project, over and above the supreme value it would contribute to Amtrak by dramatically increasing capacity on the Penn Line and lowering trip times on the Northeast Corridor. And by the way, the economic multiplier effect around BWI itself, and in Northern Anne Arundel County, isn’t factored in at all. If it were, these revenue numbers could move substantially higher.
