Enabling sprawl through Metrorail expansion

The Sprawl & Crawl column also discusses the B30 bus in another context, "Metro to BWI" and he quotes Sec. of Transportation in Maryland, Robert Flanagan, who "has been trying to build support to extend the Metrorail in the direction of [BWI] Airport. The argument is that the airport is one of the main economic engines of the state and it should therefore be connected to the Washington rail system." The column is somewhat derisive because of the low ridership of the B30.

The columnist should be advised that this isn't so much about expanding transit, but enabling sprawl. I discussed this in the summer in the context of the Base Realignment and Closing process (BRAC). Flanagan then raised this issue, which was reported in the Baltimore Sun. In part it would be to provide service to Fort Meade, which is getting more business so to speak, with proposals to close more urban military installations in places like Arlington County, and move them out to extant bases like Fort Meade.



Transit as opposed to commuter rail, makes the most sense in more urban settings, where there is a fair amount of population density per acre.

As much as people bitch about WMATA and trash Richard White (he has some tin ear proclivities similar to those of Mayor Williams), the WMATA system brings in the most farebox revenue per user, for rail and bus, of any other transit system in the United States.

If you've ever been to the Greenbelt Metro Station, it's gross. It's a spot out there in the wilderness that requires everyone to be driven to the station, either by car or bus. I don't recall seeing any extant development adjacent to this station.

Any discussions of such transit expansion needs to be thought of as more comparable to commuter railroad service, even with plans to use the heavy rail subway system to bring it about.

MARC diesel engine at Union Station.

That being said, greater connectedness is better than less connectedness. Although such a connection is likely to doom Maglev service between Baltimore and DC.

Index Keywords: sprawl; transit