MARC...Activism: Keep the Ten-Trip!

You just knew it would come to this! First an e-mail group, then the blogs now an On-Line Petition! That's right. Fellow MARC victim and avid fan of The MARC...Train - Katrina Prieur of Baltimore has drafted a petition that you can review and sign on line at:

http://www.petitiononline.com/10Trip/petition.html

Katrina is also turning up the political heat, too. At least one member of Congress has co-sponsored this petition and a review of the signatories includes one Robert "Peak Oil" Bartlett. While the names on the petition are of a dubious nature, I am going to assume that Maryland's only Republican congressman has actually signed the petition.

The Ten-Trip ticket, as the petition describes it, will be missed by those commuters who do not use the MARC "service" everyday of the week or month. The Ten-Trip allows these commuters a more cost-effective way of paying the fare. Without this option they are forced buy Weekly or Monthly passes at a premium since they won't be using the service.

The other option is to purchase a raft of one way tickets, also amounting to a premium over the Ten-Trip. This option means that you have to estimate the number of trips you'll be taking times the expiration period of the one-way tickets divided by annulled-train factor times the Dangerous Overcrowding coefficient. This is a complex formula and invariably results in a fraction of a trip or a negative trip, both of which, unfortunately, are entirely realistic.

So, if you value your time and money and are not real strong in math, please visit the on-line petition and sign your name. My advice is to just give your general location, not your exact mailing address.