Don't Hold Your Breath

Good advice for MARC commuters waiting for the extra carriages to relieve the Dangerous Overcrowding on early morning and evening trains. Oh and that parking garage? Forget it. It's the Loser Lot for those of you who can't make it to the Odenton station before dawn.

According to the Annapolis Kapital, funding for the garage (or just a study of the garage) and the extra carriages were cut this week from the MTA budget. I hate to say I told you so. On the down side, we have to listen tothe tired excuse of "well, we just have no money..." from the MARC folk for another 10 years.

Yeah, apparently those crazy Marylanders, in an effort to keep some of their money from the confiscatory O'Malley administration and entrenched Democrats in Annapolis, are driving less and buying less gas! Imagine that. And they are buying cheaper cars thereby paying less taxes to cover the enormous costs of getting a clear title on your car. The gas and title taxes were supposed to be revenue sources for the MTA projects that just went up in smoke this week.

Think about this for a moment. The revenue sources for mass transit are to come from people who don't use mass transit (they buy lots of gas and cars). Now, if all of those gas- and car-buyers decided to take mass transit instead, where would we be? On MARC trains that look like the one in the video clip posted nearby, that's where. What large group of idiots that meet for 90 a year in Annapolis decided that this was a good idea? Hmmmmmmmm.

Well, in the Kapital-paper (that's as opposed to the Sun-paper) John Porcari, MDoT Knuckledragger-in-Chief, says he is looking for a few good ideas that the MARC-ons can do NOW, on the cheap. Herewith some ideas:

Parking in Odenton - I have been trying for about 10 years now to get the MARC-ons to CHARGE for PARKING in Odenton. Why? For the exact opposite reasons why it's stooopid to base mass transit revenue on taxes that decline with the increase in mass transit use! The LAST reason it is a good idea to CHARGE FOR PARKING is to make money.

People take to free parking like bears to a garbage dump. Charging a even a nominal fee will instantly cause some people (a statistically predictable percentage) to look elsewhere, like going BACK to BWI where most of them used to go before THAT garage project started causing parking and other problems. A larger fee would cause even more folks to try other ways of saving money. Especially those folks who live all the way out in Piney Orchard. People (this excludes MARC managers) make rational decisions a thousand times a day based on the "How-much-it-gonna-cost-me?" model of human behavior.

Oh, but Mr. Netherland, they whined, we don't want to discourage ridership! Why not? If you discourage ridership (IF, that is) in the bargain then you also solve the Dangerous Overcrowding of the early morning and evening trains. They name streets after people with such ideas.

Oh but how would we treat the day-trippers, the one or two day tourists? They have a right to ride too, ya know! Yeah, they have a right to ride. They don't have a right to free parking.

I look forward to reading and posting your ideas. Remember, the MARC-ons get an e-mail message every time we post!