This past August, the Maryland Transit Administration announced a plan to cut back all but two of the six trains which stop at the MARC Brunswick Line’s three West Virginia stations each day. The new schedule was slated to take effect on November 4 unless West Virginia pays the $3.4 million Maryland wants to continue the line’s current level of service, but that deadline has now been pushed back.

MTA Director of Media Relations Brittany Marshall confirmed that the current schedule has been extended at least to November 30 in order to provide more time for negotiations between the two states to continue.

The Brunswick Line carries a few hundred West Virginia residents, many of them commuters, into Maryland and DC and back each day, according to the MTA. Some commuters say the reduced service—a single train into DC at 5 am and a single train back to West Virginia departing at 4:25 pm—will hurt their ability to use the Brunswick Line to get to work.

The issue has also drawn concern from advocates who are worried about rising congestion on Maryland’s highways, as well as what the cuts say about both states’ transit priorities.

These are the stations that would be impacted by the Brunswick Line service cuts. Image by MDOT.

Commuters say the cuts will hurt

The roots of the Brunswick Line’s current funding crisis date back at least to 2017. That’s when Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) officials first warned West Virginia they’d no longer be willing to pay for the Brunswick Line to make its current three trips to and from Harpers Ferry, Duffields, and Martinsburg MARC stations each day. The agency said the Mountaineer State would have to pay $3.2 million each year to maintain that level of service.

The crisis was briefly postponed in 2018, when West Virginia agreed to pay $1.5 million to extend service for another year. But this year, West Virginia has only come up with $1.1 million of the slightly increased amount Maryland is asking for. MTA says that’s enough for two trains per day on the Brunswick Line into West Virginia, but no more than that.

In August, the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) announced that come November, it would be reducing both the number of trains going to and from Union Station in DC and West Virginia each morning and afternoon from three to one.

Under this new schedule, the 5:25 and 6:25 am trains from Martinsburg to Union Station would end at Brunswick, the last station in Maryland, leaving Train 872 at 5 am as the only eastbound option. Likewise, the 5:40 and 6:20 pm trains from Union Station to Martinsburg would be cut, leaving Train 875, which departs from Washington at 4:25 pm as the only westbound option for commuters traveling beyond Brunswick.

Maryland state legislators are especially concerned that with service to West Virginia cut back so drastically, more commuters will park at the two Maryland-based MARC stations closest to West Virginia: Brunswick and Point of Rocks. “Where are they going to park? I have no idea,” Delegate Carol Krimm told the Frederick News-Post back in June, a little over a month before the MTA’s plans were announced.

What’s next for the Brunswick service?

The MTA held a hearing at the Charles Town Library in Charles Town, West Virginia on September 7 to solicit public feedback to the cuts. The meeting was packed to capacity, and residents complained about the reduced service, saying it would hurt both commuters and tourism.

Various attempts have been made to head off the cuts. West Virginia State Delegate John Doyle told Maryland Matters shortly after the hearing that he’d asked West Virginia Governor Jim Justice to dip into the state’s contingency funds to help extend the Brunswick Line’s current level of service for one more year.

In a closed-door meeting on October 10, representatives of seven West Virginia cities and counties affected by the cuts agreed on what the Charleston Gazette-Mail described as a “tentative plan to contribute $300,000” towards saving the Brunswick Line’s current service levels. At that same meeting, a representative of Justice’s office told the other representatives the West Virginia Governor would be willing to increase state funding for the Brunswick Line as long as the counties and cities made “a serious financial commitment” to the service.

The MTA didn’t provide a direct response to this plan, but it did notify customers this week that the current Brunswick Line schedule has been extended from November 4 to November 30 to provide more time for discussions. If the cuts do go through, Marshall said that the MTA would provide 30 days notice before any changes go into effect.