Stimulate that MARC train!

I saw some good news in the Baltimore Business Journal this week. The Maryland Department of Transportation has applied for $360 million of stimulus funds to be applied to commuter and passenger rail improvements. It's a laundry list of good ideas, many of them discussed the in the strategic plan for the MARC that the MTA put out a few years ago. It's great to see that we might actually get funding for some of these improvements. If this funding comes through it should help with some of the complaints everyone has about train delays and rail capacity issues. The Baltimore Business Journal article has a lot of good information on what they're looking into, but I'll highlight a few that I think are pretty interesting.

The most important is probably the $200 million to replace three bridges in Maryland. The new bridges will be three tracks instead of two, allowing for more high-speed (well, Acela at least) trains and increased passenger train usage overall. This is really an important development because increasing train capacity on these bridges is really vital to expanding train service and improving it's timeliness in the region. This is money that will go directly into engineering and construction over the next couple years and will accomplish exactly what the stimulus was meant to do - keep companies going until the economy recovers and the private sector can provide the business. It's a great opportunity to do some good infrastructure work that we'd like to be doing anyway, but might have to pay a lot more for services if there was more demand.

Maryland's Department of Transportation has also asked for $10 million to install a GPS-tracking system in the trains (sounds a lot like what I was on about on about in my complaining-about-the-MARC post).

In the category of really-important-projects-that-we-need-to-start-immediately-because-they-will-take-FOREVER-to-complete is the work to replace/improve/expand the Baltimore & Potomac (B&P) tunnel in Baltimore. This tunnel is really Baltimore's claim to passenger rail fame right now, because it is the choke point for Amtrak's Northeast Corridor (NEC). Wikipedia has a pretty good write-up on the B&P tunnel and on the original Baltimore & Potomac railroad. Basically, the tunnel was completed in 1873 and aside from some repairs and minor improvements to drainage in the early 1980's, it is essentially a 19th century piece of infrastructure. Pretty amazing when you think about it.

The B&P tunnel is a big problem for passenger rail travel along Amtrak's NEC because, as Amtrak's 2005 report to Congress on rail infrastructure in Baltimore (see page 2-16, Box 2-1) puts it, "A sharp curve at the south portal of the tunnel prevents southbound trains departing Baltimore Pennsylvania Station from accelerating beyond 30 mph. An uphill, milelong, 1.34 percent grade further constrains train performance." That's right, if you've ever thought "Hey, it feels like we're moving really slow," why heading south on the MARC, it's because that's exactly what was happening.

(Aside: That 2005 report is pretty fascinating, if dense, reading. After reading most of it one Sunday afternoon I got a much better appreciation of why we're still using such a difficult tunnel that opened 136 years ago. Turns out it's ridiculously difficult to build infrastructure in the Baltimore area due to geography - the "Fall Line" runs directly through Baltimore. The report was actually commissioned after the 2001 fire in the Howard St. Tunnel (another piece of 19th century infrastructure (completed in 1890)). When the Howard St. Tunnel was shut down due to a derailment, CSX freight trains on the south side of Baltimore had to detour west to Cleveland, north to Albany, and then head back south to reach the north side of Baltimore.)

So, anyway, this application for stimulus funds includes $60 million for studies and engineering on how to improve this tunnel. It's not going to be cheap, actual construction of a new tunnel will be in the billions of dollars. I have to be honest, I'm not super-optimistic we'll see that starting any time soon. Replacing the B&P tunnel will only shift the bottleneck to Baltimore's Union Tunnel on the other side of Penn Station. Although the Union Tunnel would be easier to upgrade because it's shorter and already has three tracks.

Anyway, there's your story for the day on how under-investment in passenger rail for the last 60 years has left us hamstrung now that we're winding down our love affair with the automobile. Don't get me wrong, I don't think we'll ever replace cars with public transit - I'm saying that America really needs more options for transportation. And if we don't start the projects, we'll never finish.

That's why I'm excited about this project, it's the perfect use of fiscal stimulus money. These are projects that you probably want to do anyway but might not get done when the economy is humming along. Once you're in a recession with a gap between possible output and actual demand and you decide you want the government to step in a provide some temporary demand until private demand recovers. Infrastructure projects like this fit the bill because they will improve passenger and freight movement capability and capacity when things begin to pick up again.

The MARC Train System in Graphs

Recently I've started using the MARC train system a lot (precipitated by wrecking my car and needing to get to work). It's more expensive than driving and my commute is not bad (I have a reverse commute), but I've found it's really a pleasant way to get to and from work. I've also found that there are WAY more people riding the train that I'd thought. I stick to the Baltimore area, but I'm super impressed about how many people are using the trains every day.

The MTA does not publish ridership statistics on the MARC trains, so I emailed their “Contact Us” page. Much to my (pleasant) surprise, they replied almost immediately and were more than happy to share information. In a world where most places ignore your emails or take days to give you a non-answer, the MTA is a great exception. Anyway, I learned some interesting facts:

1. MARC train get a lot of riders
2. Generally, more people are riding the MARC now than ever before
3. It's impossible to make strong statements about how much ridership the MARC is getting

Statements #1 and #2 come from the data that the MTA supplied me. Statement #3 comes from their ridership counting methodology. Here is exactly how they determine daily ridership: on the first Wednesday of the month conductors count everyone who gets on and off at each station. Why Wednesday? Because Wednesday is typically the peak usage day for the system. So, as you'd expect, the data is SUPER noisy and absolute numbers are unreliable. However, after looking it over I'd say that it's probably pretty good from a general trends standpoint. Getting better data is probably possible, but very expensive and of questionable usefulness. I'm pretty sure that the data the MTA does get is good enough to manage the system.

On the other hand, what the MARC data lacks in detail on a day-to-day basis is made up for in it's historical value. The MTA sent me a spreadsheet with their data for monthly ridership counts going back to October 2001! They included their 12 month moving average data going back to February 2002! And, in the spirit of sharing, I've put that spreadsheet up for anyone to download.

It's a lot of data, and whenever I'm confronted with a lot of data I try to graph it to make some sort of sense of it all. So since they sent me this data I've been manipulating it in different ways, trying to see what I can learn and how best to describe the whole system.

(Note: The following discussion assumes that you have a passing knowledge of the MARC train system. Wikipedia and the MTA have plenty of information, but basically you should know that there are 3 passenger train lines – the Penn Line, the Camden Line, and the Brunswick Line. The Penn Line operates on the Amtrak-owned Northeast Corridor tracks, the Camden Line and Brunswick Line are at the mercy of CSX freight trains. All lines terminate at Washington Union Station. The Camden Line terminates at Camden Yards in Baltimore. The Penn Line passes through Baltimore Penn Station and continues towards Aberdeen and terminates at Perryville. The Brunswick Line has two spurs, one to Martinsburg, WV and the other to Frederick.)

A final note on this data. The MTA counts total station usage (i.e. boardings plus alightings), so the number of passengers is the total usage divided by 2. All of these numbers are daily numbers, but counted on peak usage days, so the average is discounted by some amount (which I won't even guess at). The MARC trains operate weekdays (an average of 250 days per year).

First off, total station usage by station. I have split Washington Union Station into 3 pieces, one for each of the rail lines.

First of all, you're probably thinking “Wow, I never knew that there were so many MARC stations!” and “Wow, everyone's going to DC and they're doing it on the Penn Line.” The Penn Line blows the Camden and Brunswick lines out of the water in terms of total ridership. In June 2009, the Penn Line accounted for 63.5% of total MARC system usage. There are many reasons for this, including facts like better on-time performance because the Penn Line is on Amtrak-owned tracks, good station locations in population centers, and the whole idea of the rich getting richer – the Penn Line is highly used so more capital investment is made on the Penn Line to length platforms, build parkings spaces, etc.

What does total system usage look like? Well, in June 2009 the 12 month moving average of total usage was running at 34,274, which indicates over 17,000 passengers on peak days. That's a lot of cars off the road when you think about. Especially considering that roads and traffic delays are fairly non-linear, the more cars on the road the worse the effect of each marginal car. Since most of these trains run for commuters to reach DC, traffic could be far worse without this service.

Just how many of these passengers are going to DC? From the data I have, I can't answer that question. I can, however, answer a related question, “How many of these passengers arrive or depart from Union Station?” And, “How has that changed over time?”

This chart shows some very interesting trends. Over the course of the last 7 years, the Brunswick Line has increased the proportion of trips that do not involve Union Station from 30% to 40%. That's very helpful for the keeping Union Station from being overwhelmed (spoiler alert: Union Station is pretty much overwhelmed by commuter traffic). I think it's pretty easy to explain this trend though. The Brunswick Line makes stops at Rockville, Kensington, and Silver Spring – good place to get off the MARC and get onto the Metro. Many of the commuters on the Brunswick Line may well be going to DC, they just have better options than Union Station.

The second interesting trends on that chart is that the Camden Line's fraction of travelers not going to Union Station peaked in 2008 and has since decreased. My estimation there would be that during high gas prices in 2008 a few more people started to use the Camden Line to commute to downtown Baltimore. Baltimore's traffic and parking situation is nothing like DC's, so when gas prices eased people reverted to their old ways. Honestly though, this could just be a strange blip in the data. The Penn Line has such noisy data for trips that do not involve Union Station that it's hard to understand. When you look at total trips (instead of a fraction of the whole), the data is noisy enough to make you think there is just something wrong with it.

There are some strange dips and peaks in the Penn Line data while the Camden Line and Brunswick Line show much smoother trends. What is good news for the MARC system is the combination of these two graphs. Trips that do not involve Union Station are increasing faster than overall system growth (as evidenced by the fact that total number of trips has increased as well as the fraction of the total). This means that instead of a system that runs trains full of DC commuters one-way and empty trains the other, you are starting to get a few more paying customers on those trains that would otherwise be empty.

Now for a look at the total system usage over the last few years:

If you're a fan of public transit you've got to love a chart that looks like that. The R2 value is 0.96 for a line of increasing ridership from 2002 through 2009. The fit line says every day from February 2002 to June 2009, an additional 1.75 passengers started riding MARC trains. That's great news for the system, but it's not unconditionally good news. I've had a hard time finding official numbers on what “capacity” actually is for the system, but the numbers I have seen are striking similar to actual usage. That means that system is actually operating near capacity and could probably increase ridership further with additional resources.

This is a lot of growth, but where is it coming from? Are there stations that have actually seen fewer riders? In general, growth is everywhere; in specific, the Penn Line. Over the past 5 years the Penn Line has added more usage than the Camden Line has total.

Line	12 Mon. Moving Avg. Ridership		Increase	Increase (%)	Average Annual Growth Rate
	June 2004	June 2009
Penn	16,273	21,762	5,489	33.73%	6.0%
Camden	4,255	4,768	513	12.05%	2.3%
Brunswick	6,765	7,744	979	14.47%	2.7%
Total	27,293	34,274	6,980	25.58%	4.7%

Here are a few charts that show a “then and now” look at the three lines over the last five years. I've maintained the same scale between charts to illustrate how the Penn Line dominates the MARC system. I do not include Union Station simply because it would ruin the scale of the chart.




And finally, just because I have the data and can plot it, here is a look at Penn Line station usage over the last 7 years and Union Station usage by the three MARC lines.




For the Penn Line data, the most impressive part of this data is that even after the financial crisis and the tremendous drop in gas prices, the Penn Line has not lost passengers. Perhaps these passengers are like me, they started riding the train by necessity and they kept riding it because it's just a lot less stressful than fighting traffic. Honestly, I think the number one thing constraining ridership at some of these stations is just parking availability. The plans to build additional parking at West Baltimore will likely increase the ridership there.

Meanwhile, the data on Union Station shows just why that train station is able to support so many businesses and shops while Baltimore's Penn Station can barely support a snack stand and a souvenir store. Actually, that is a bit of a unfair comparison, Penn Station seems to have more than enough traffic to support a few more commercial enterprises – but I'll have more thoughts on that in another blog post.

MARC Train Policies - I'm Sorry

So a recent comment on my blog post regarding the MTA's policies on MARC trains has shown that I didn't do enough in-depth research on the MARC train website.

The comment refutes my points pretty well.  Yes, I could stand behind the claim of "Well, it's not well publicized if I didn't know this information" - but when you're wrong, you're wrong.

I still believe that there's a better "MARC Train Tracker" that what exists, but I'll give them credit for trying.

The only thing I would really say is that if the MARC fare box recovery rate is 60% at peak travel times does not preclude a profitable weekend train.  I'd just like to see more of the analysis and assumptions that go into the calculations.  It seems like that math should all be published in a report somewhere.  There could be a nice section on the MARC website called "Latest MARC Reports" with summarizes of the information they provide to the MTA and to the State of Maryland.  Why would this information not be published?

So to everyone at the MTA and the MARC train (if you ever stumble upon this post) - I'm sorry, I spoke/blogged before I really had my facts straight.

MARC Train Policies - The Opposite of a Good Idea

(Update 8/8/09: I definitely wrote this after a bad experience on the MARC. After many more good experiences, I've written a new post on the system usage. Yes, there are frustrating commutes sometimes, but in general don't listen to my post below, just enjoy the train.)

(Update 4/21/09: Apparently some of the features that I wish the MARC system had already exist - mea culpa)

It's been a long, cold winter, but recently the weather has gotten nice enough for me to think, "Perhaps I should start taking the train to work again." From where I live I have the opportunity to walk to Penn Station, then take the MARC train, then walk 15 minutes to my office.

This morning, after not having ridden the train in some time, I was quite confused that I could not purchase a "10-trip pass" at the kiosk. These passes were mildly discounted from the normal fare, but not as cheap as a weekly pass. It turns out that the MTA eliminated 10-trip passes on January 9th, 2009. So what are your options?

Single trip ticket - $4.00

Weekly Pass - $30.00

10-trip pass - $32.00 ELIMINATED!

Monthly Pass - $100.00

That's it! You can buy a weekly pass, but unless you commute round-trip 4 days a week, you lose money. Or you can buy single trip tickets. As other bloggers have pointed out, all this is going to do is convince occasional riders to drive instead. Even with expensive gas, the ten-trip pass was more expensive than driving. Now that gas is cheaper, the MTA has decided that the train should be more expensive.

I'd go even further. Even if I decided to suck it up because I wanted to keep from putting miles on my car (and avoid an expensive repair for awhile), I'm going to have a buy a ticket for every trip. Either every time I walk into the train station or I'll have to buy a stack of them and hope I use them all before they expire. Also, I'll need a stack for each direction. I mean, eliminating or reducing the discount on the ten-trip pass sort of makes sense, I know the state budget is strained, but why does it make sense eliminate the existence of a multi-trip pass?

It seems like the MTA treats the MARC trains as a luxury service offered to the people of Maryland. Newsflash: people who ride the trains are part of the solution for congestion and sprawl!

The other thing that doesn't seem to register in the minds of the MTA - if the service is more flexible, people on the fence will use the service more often. And why is there still no weekend MARC service? In the morning, run a train from north to south, then back up. In the evening, repeat. I bet MARC weekend service would be pretty overwhelmingly popular. Sure, if you have a weekly or monthly pass you can ride Amtrak on the weekends, but I'm talking about making the train work for occasional users. Basically every person I know in Baltimore who has friends in DC has wished that there was some sort of weekend MARC service. I bet you could actually turn a profit on weekend service!

I am definitely a big proponent of realism and understanding that there's only so much money to go around. But mass transit is more than just a service, it's a way to reduce pollution and congestion. Better, more consistent, rail connections within Maryland should be a priority - not an afterthought in the state budget.

So I was just talking with my girlfriend about questions that I have about MARC train service that don't have real answers:

1. Why don't we know the on-time percentage of MARC trains? It's not rocket science, this is the year 2009. Surely someone could record when a train arrived at a station and then have that information put into some sort of database. If this isn't already done, seriously, why not? If it is, then why isn't this information public?

2. Seriously, what does it cost to run a train from Baltimore to Washington, DC and back? Why is this not public information? If it's so expensive that you can't offer this service, prove it! Or at least experiment with it.

3. Why can't we put a damn GPS receiver on every train? Stick with me here, this is a pretty advanced concept. Put a GPS receiver on the trains, have it transmit data back to some main server every 60 seconds or so, make this data publicly available for anyone to view. Sound difficult? It's not, you could do this with an iPhone and a free app. Maybe with something a little more advanced people could see where their train was while waiting in their nice warm car instead of freezing to death on the platform.

Here's a proposal. How about we tie the incentive pay structure in the MTA to on-time percentage? I mean, why not expand this to figuring out if the Light Rail runs on time or even the buses? GPS units are not that expensive and if you don't go wild and hire too expensive of a contractor to implement the software it wouldn't kill you to even outfit the buses.

I think the reason that MARC train riders are always so frustrated with the MTA is just the lack of transparency. For me, it's the lack of vision. The Baltimore-Washington metro area is not going to get any less urbanized. If the suburban park-and-rides are already overcrowded, it's not going to get any better. It's time for some real leadership and vision. I'm talking about an elected official willing to stand up and say "Hey, this costs money, but we're going to need this in 25 years, so we have to spend the money now." Then, they'd actually have to think about how to re-design public transit to lay the infrastructure for the next 50 years instead of just tacking on bus routes after the people are already there!