Regional Effort to Reduce Traffic from Baltimore to Richmond (Owings Mills: transfer to, cost)

[choccity]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...=.d149bba2d089

[Atony]

Part of that proposal includes connecting in the MARC with the VRE. Completely agree, that seems like such a common sense thing to have happen. Would be great to be able to hope on a train in Baltimore and take it all the way into locations in Northern Virginia.

[Woodlands]

Originally Posted by Atony

Part of that proposal includes connecting in the MARC with the VRE. Completely agree, that seems like such a common sense thing to have happen. Would be great to be able to hope on a train in Baltimore and take it all the way into locations in Northern Virginia.

Agree 100% percent.. Not sure why this hasn't been done already....like decades ago

[bus man]

Connecting MARC and VRE is not the be-all and end-all to regional mobility. After all, the two lines already meet in the same location (Union Station) and transferring isn't the end of the world. What is needed is for both lines to operate frequent service, in both directions, for long periods of time in the day and into the evening, 7 days a week. Do that, and it won't make any real difference if the trains run through to each other's tracks or not.

[Atony]

Connecting MARC and VRE is not the be-all and end-all to regional mobility. After all, the two lines already meet in the same location (Union Station) and transferring isn't the end of the world.

Having to transfer will always be a detriment. It gives you another chance to have a cog in your travel plans as you have to make the schedule of another system. Let's say you are coming from NoVa and going to a flight at BWI, or coming from Baltimore and working in NoVa. Direct vs non-direct is the difference with whether people felt comfortable relying on public transportation or not.

What is needed is for both lines to operate frequent service, in both directions,

Yes I was getting ready to make this point. Currently VRE only goes northbound in the morning, southbound in the evening. If I wanted to transfer to the VRE to go Northern Virginia in the morning it is literally impossible.

[MidValleyDad]

Originally Posted by Woodlands

Agree 100% percent.. Not sure why this hasn't been done already....like decades ago

It was done decades ago - When the railroads ran their own passenger service. And they are connected today it is called AMTRAK. All they need to do is tweak the schedule.

[Cruzincat]

I did not see anything in the story that indicated a move to direct the traffic away from the area via a bypass for those that are traveling N-S or S-N along the coast. As it is right now, one would have to end up on I95 somewhere north of Richmond, no matter what route you might take to avoid Washington, unless you go way out of the way to pick up I81. Even that turns off a lot of people who have tried it and hated getting stuck behind trucks trying to pass each other on a long hill. I81 is really only viable for someone traveling to The Deep South from points north of Philadelphia.

This issue should have been dealt with starting 10-20 years ago. I spent the last 30+ years driving all around these areas working as a field service engineer, so I managed to see it all at different times of the year. It seems that the powers that be think tolls will keep people off of the busy roads. But where have they used this money to add more roads to take the pressure off the existing highways?

A toll road should be built for those traveling through the area from points north of Maryland to points south of Richmond with limited exchanges between those points, such that local people can still access it, but only if they are traveling a long way. Something like the Harbor Tunnel/I895 is built. Once you get on it, you have to go through the tunnel. Such a toll road would have on ramps for locals to get on the road, but only if they are going to get off somewhere distant and at a point where the infrastructure could handle the amount of vehicles exiting at that point. This would tend to move the congestion away from the more congested areas.

The fact that they waited too long to get active trying to fix it doesn’t bother me, since I just retired. I feel sorry for everyone else that will be facing this in the future, because I don’t think they are approaching it in a way that will fix it without having to play catch-up when they realize that people still want to have their cars with them when they get to where they are going.

[OyCrumbler]

Originally Posted by bus man

Connecting MARC and VRE is not the be-all and end-all to regional mobility. After all, the two lines already meet in the same location (Union Station) and transferring isn't the end of the world. What is needed is for both lines to operate frequent service, in both directions, for long periods of time in the day and into the evening, 7 days a week. Do that, and it won't make any real difference if the trains run through to each other's tracks or not.

Sure, that's true to some extent. Riders generally prefer to not transfer and will sometimes go out of their way to avoid it, but upping frequencies makes it so that average time spent transferring can be greatly reduced.

However, there's something else that connecting MARC and VRE does which is allow through-running. A through-running operation is almost always better, especially where space is limited such as in a densely packed downtown area, because it obviates the need to have a massive interlocking and multiple terminal berths. This allows for the possibility of much greater frequencies when it comes to operations.

What VRE and MARC should be are combined routes and electrified acting as essentially an express version of the Washington Metro. This is what happens in many other cities in developed countries and is why German cities have things like the S-Bahn networks, Paris has the RER system, and why London is creating its Crossrail program.

[james777]

Originally Posted by Cruzincat

I did not see anything in the story that indicated a move to direct the traffic away from the area via a bypass for those that are traveling N-S or S-N along the coast. As it is right now, one would have to end up on I95 somewhere north of Richmond, no matter what route you might take to avoid Washington, unless you go way out of the way to pick up I81. Even that turns off a lot of people who have tried it and hated getting stuck behind trucks trying to pass each other on a long hill. I81 is really only viable for someone traveling to The Deep South from points north of Philadelphia.

This issue should have been dealt with starting 10-20 years ago. I spent the last 30+ years driving all around these areas working as a field service engineer, so I managed to see it all at different times of the year. It seems that the powers that be think tolls will keep people off of the busy roads. But where have they used this money to add more roads to take the pressure off the existing highways?

A toll road should be built for those traveling through the area from points north of Maryland to points south of Richmond with limited exchanges between those points, such that local people can still access it, but only if they are traveling a long way. Something like the Harbor Tunnel/I895 is built. Once you get on it, you have to go through the tunnel. Such a toll road would have on ramps for locals to get on the road, but only if they are going to get off somewhere distant and at a point where the infrastructure could handle the amount of vehicles exiting at that point. This would tend to move the congestion away from the more congested areas.

The fact that they waited too long to get active trying to fix it doesn’t bother me, since I just retired. I feel sorry for everyone else that will be facing this in the future, because I don’t think they are approaching it in a way that will fix it without having to play catch-up when they realize that people still want to have their cars with them when they get to where they are going.

The toll road that you are envisioning was built in the 1950s and opened in 1957 as the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel Thruway. Before it opened, one traveling south from New York to Florida had to drive on the old US1, south on Belair Road to North Avenue, then North Avenue west to West Baltimore, then south on Monroe Street out of the city. The Harbor Tunnel Thruway was designed to get traffic through the city (that's why they called it a thruway, not a beltway, expressway, or causeway), which is why it was built with no exits before the tunnel, on either side of the tunnel. The planners didn't want people using it to go short distances, like one or two exits down the road. In recent years, changes have been made, such as the southbound exit at Lombard Street, to provide easier access to the new Johns Hopkins Bayview.

About 20 or 25 years ago, there were a couple of proposals to reroute through traffic on I-95 out of the Baltimore area. One idea was to build an "outer beltway" in a semi circle around the Baltimore metro, beginning on I-95 between White Marsh and BelAir, then going west above Hunt Valley and Owings Mills, and curving around and heading south towards DC. The cost would have been prohibitive, and there would have been plenty of opposition from property owners in Northern Baltimore County. Another idea would be to build a new road, called I-99, from I-95 in North Carolina, across the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and up the Delmarva peninsula. It would reconnect with I-95 near Wilmington, DE, bypassing the traffic jams of Richmond, Washington, and Baltimore. For various reasons, neither option got off the ground.

[MidValleyDad]

The biggest problem with making a major Baltimore/DC metro area bypass is the long standing difference of opinion ofwhere to put it between MD and VA. Maryland wants it run east of DC, Virginia wants it run west of DC. This has been holding it up for at least 30 years.