Kaback9 wrote:NJT does not own the NEC but they manage to run their own train crews on it, I'm not buying that. I believe it has to do with the MTA showing a lack of interest in the railroad. If there was any interest at all there would be no slashing of trains that make sense, and there would be route expansion going on, and yes you guys would have weekend service.
Geez, this no weekend service is really bothering you. Is Amtrak
that bad??? Trust me when I tell you the MTA (and the [liberal] Maryland government overall) show a very strong interest in mass transit, and heavily fund projects which would recently include adding extra trains, replacing all the bilevel seats, rehabbing the AEM-7's, buying all of VRE's Kawasaki's back, rehabbing the single level cars etc. I seem to remember reading on the NJT board recently how NJT was making all these ridiculous major cuts that pale in comparison to the 1 and a half round trips MARC's cutting, and how the state was ignoring NJT. This recession will most definitely slow the MARC expansion down though. And you can forget about weekend service in the near future.
Reasons:
1. The recession
2. If Amtrak didn't run the NEC, MARC would definitely have weekend service, but since Amtrak already runs frequently and stops at all the stations,
and accepts MARC passes (the MTA pays a fee of course), its not an immediate priority for weekend service.
3. Unlike other metro areas where the private sector accounts for most of the jobs, the majority of MARC commuters (into DC) are
federal workers, who
don't work on weekends (for the most part. So you can't simply ask why smaller systems have weekend service and MARC doesn't.
4. Amtrak (and the crew) don't want to run the service, and the current Amtrak/MTA contract doesn't expire for at least another year or so.