So you've just said goodbye to your job in Baltimore and have accepted an exciting new position in Washington. The nation's capital beckons, but not its inflated real estate market.
You want the best of both worlds: D.C. pay and prestige, Baltimore ambience and affordability. And being a smart cookie, there's no way you're going to pay the exorbitant cost of driving to Washington and parking there every day.
Sounds like you're a perfect candidate for MARC.
Not so fast, hotshot. Commuter rail isn't for everyone.
Take it from Len Sipes, former public information officer for the agency that runs Maryland prisons, current spokesman for a Washington-based organization he prefers not to name, and veteran Penn Line commuter.
"If you're an A-type personality who likes a lot of control over your circumstances, MARC is not your cup of tea," he told me as he recounted the most recent indignities inflicted by the MARC system.
For at least six weeks, Sipes, like tens of thousands of MARC riders, has been enduring one of the system's periodic rough patches. On MARC, that means schedules that become exercises in wishful thinking, cattle-car conditions on some trains, near-riots at Washington's Union Station, trains that pass riders at stations without even a wave from the engineer, broken-down equipment, overheated tracks and conductors who haven't a clue what the problem is or how long it's going to take to fix it.
You know, the usual stuff.
Before you board your first train, there's something you should know about MARC: It's not any kind of business you're used to.
You see, nobody really runs MARC. Officially, it falls under the purview of the Maryland Transit Administration, and last week it was MTA Administrator Paul J. Wiedefeld who issued an abject apology for the system's recent failings. But in the short term, he has about as much control over whether the 5:20 p.m. train departs Union Station on time as Barney the Dinosaur.
The tracks MARC runs on? They're not MARC tracks. Amtrak owns the Penn Line. Its top priority is intercity rail. CSX owns the Camden and Brunswick lines. Its priority is the kind of freight that doesn't whine about getting home late.
The conductors aboard the MARC trains, whether surly or sweet, are Amtrak employees. So are the operators running the trains and the mechanics maintaining the locomotives.
