MARC Managers...Late Trains

Well there was supposed to be a picture of the the MARC managers who set up propaganda shop in Holding Pen C as it turns out. While passengers from the late 6:05 train and the soon-to-be-late 6:40 train crowded into the holding pen, they take a few minutes to express their gratitude for the fine job MARC is doing to serve their customers.

It was just too good to be true. I expected the MARC morons to set up a pristine holding area with new seats that were arranged so that passengers could actually get to and sit in half of them. So imagine my amusement when I arrived to find a stuffed to over-capacity Holding Pen and the three MARC "managers" deflecting questions about the two trains that evening and the generally shoddy service that Maryland commuters have endured and will likely continue to endure.

I got the same shell game when I asked about the Dangerous Overcrowding of the trains, like this evening's 6:05. First the manager who accompanied MARC Director John Hovatter denied that there was overcrowding on the train. Then he denied that it was Dangerous overcrowding. Finally, after listening, while several other passengers nodded their heads, to graphic descriptions of how dangerous overcrowding occurs routinely on their trains he admitted that there is nothing they could do about it. Look at them, he said gesturing to the throng mobbing the Holding Pen doors to the platform, we can't stop that. I countered that Amtrak can and does stop them effectively with their riot squad and dogs they deploy every night to keep passengers from hindering the off-loading of incoming trains.

Why can't you just keep folks from boarding cars that are filled to capacity? Well, our customers would never stand for it, he relented. What I and countless others have seen would make personal injury trial lawyers drool. If for no other reason, MARC should make an effort to regulate the flow of passengers onto their carriages to keep from paying out million-dollar settlements.

On a routine basis, two trains worth of passengers are stuffed, literally onto a single train. Conductors enforce the prohibition of standing in the vestibule easily enough. The scene on these trains like one from a Third-World train service. The only thing missing is the chickens. This can't possibly be America in the 21rst Century, I find myself thinking.

Next....Shoddy Conditions in Union Station!