Private Fubars on the MARC

Sometimes I get my own private fubar from the MARC trains. Even when I miraculously escape the monster breakdowns by being on company travel or a day of annual leave, they have a special way of evening that score. After dodging the bullets of Monday and Tuesday at the end of June, where hundreds of my fellow commuters were stranded in the summer heat on a stalled evening train, I got my personal treatment.

The conductor stopped back at my end of Car 5 where I was sitting with the Gang and informed me that the elevator at BWI was broken and I would be unable to cross the tracks to get my car and go home. Unlike massive breakdowns of whole trains with 900 people who are left sweltering in their seats without HVAC or water, there is a Plan B for when I cannot get off at BWI like this.

First of all it is extremely rare that the evening train arrived at the southbound side of the station in the evening except now when that event is scheduled due to track and platform work on the other side of the station. For several weeks our evening trains have been using the Three Track every night and although a nuisance to about 400 who must climb the stairs to go over the tracks, they can do it. Because my wheelchair doesn’t do stairs going up very well, I had to invoke the Plan B that we have had up our sleeves for all of the 16 years that I have commuted on this train.

Plan B involves my staying on the train for three more stops until we get to Penn Station Baltimore then either getting the next MARC train back, the next Amtrak train back or as a third option, a taxi ride back. Any of those three possibilities consume a minimum of one extra hour getting home. It is an irritation but not one where life and limb are risked in the name of holding down a job.

The bigger irritation is that the BWI station has no provisions for an alternate means of crossing the tracks. This constituted the Vulnerable Geometry of which I write. They do have provisions for ambulatory passengers to board the center track from both platforms on wooden decks laid between the rails, however one cannot cross all three track at one location. One must walk down a few steps at the end of the platform to reach the single boarding location. Such boarding operations are accomplished with station crew assistance and at time when no trains are approaching the side track that is out of service at the times the center track is needed. Again it is only me (and any other wheelchair users who happen to be planning to ride that day) who get the screws put to him.

Add to that irritation that in all the years that MARC commuter trains have operated, the Halethorpe Station has not had platforms nor any way to cross the track other than a long climb up about 40 feet of stairs and down again. And I live 5 miles closer to Halethorpe than to BWI. With due respect to the planners, they are actually now building platforms and a cross over at Halethorpe that should be completed within my lifetime.