Has there ever been plans put forth for consolidating the Halethorpe Penn Line and St. Denis Camden Line MARC stations? (Baltimore: houses)

[OyCrumbler]

The tracks for the two lines cross over each other in close proximities to these stations. It seems like this is a good place to make a potential transfer station as neither station really supports a town center nor a particularly urban area so it seems like making better use of it as a transfer station, especially if service frequencies increase in the future. There's no development right where this new station would be and there's actually more potential jobs in the immediate area of this than either current stations do. It seems like a reasonable thing to do.

[DubyaM]

I don't think the respective stations are that close. As far as development goes I imagine those folks that live nearby like things the way they are.

[Woodlands]

The Camden and Penn Lines do cross just south of Halethorpe Station.. In a perfect world they could have built a nice station that would have allowed riders from Halethorpe to take either line to DC. The time to do that would have been when they rebuilt Halethorpe several years ago. An additional challenge would have been the logistics since the location of the new station would have to negotiate a creek, two roadways addition to the tracks themselves.. There isn't a lot of land/space for a new station nor for any spin off Transit Oriented Development as the area already has residential areas and warehouses that likely wouldn't be relocated. The stream and associated flooding and along with environmental challenges alone would likely thwart a new station at that location. They would also have to build quite a long walkway to connect the existing parking lots with the new station and platforms.


https://www.google.com/maps/place/Halethorpe,+MD+21227/@39.2268542,-76.6915429,1276m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x89c804ab724e89b5:0x44912 be11c02505!8m2!3d39.2401735!4d-76.6806441


As for St. Denis.. MTA had proposed closing it several years ago as well. and the denizens wrote then Governor OMalley to leave it be..I see mostly Rail fans and train buffs hanging out at St Denis taking photos of the trains.. but I imagine a few folks get on/off and walk to their homes in the "small town" like feel that is there.. I remember a woman waiting at the station gave the conductors some home baked cookies during one of their scheduled stops... I think he was retiring or something.. You cant break that kind of bond between a community and their train station that easily...LOL I imagine there was an actual building there at one time that likely got torn down... Laurel has saved their station..I suspect the place where you will see TOD on the Camden Line will be Laurel Park.. especially if the Preakness moves down there...There is already a station there but I don't think it is used currently.. The only other slightly more utilized station is Jessup.

[Zonderpaard]

An expanded stop at St Denis doesn't make much sense to me either. Continuing it as a flag stop makes sense. There are a few people who use that stop with very low impact (time) to other riders.

Halethorpe is a busy stop, but I gather they are running out of parking space (again). The solution would seem to me to make better connections via bus to Halethorpe so that not every person has to drive and park. Consolidating it with St Denis would not improve the situation for those riders either.

There is a tremendous amount of TOD happening around Muirkirk. Busy with commuters: Laurel Main Street, Dorsey, Savage.

My understanding is that they were going to move the stop from Laurel Main to Laurel Racetrack, but the PEOPLE are at Laurel Main. So they abandoned that idea.

In the two years I've been riding the Camden line, I had seen a pretty good increase at Camden. The weird thing is that transit service to the Camden Station is really poor. There is the light rail, but that only runs north south. Very few people access the Camden station to ride MARC off the light rail. It's a significant hike to a bus stop from Camden and of course nothing is synchronized to enable smooth transfers. It's a head scratcher as to why there is zero bus service to the regional commuter rail station in South Baltimore.

[Woodlands]

Originally Posted by Zonderpaard

An expanded stop at St Denis doesn't make much sense to me either. Continuing it as a flag stop makes sense. There are a few people who use that stop with very low impact (time) to other riders.

Halethorpe is a busy stop, but I gather they are running out of parking space (again). The solution would seem to me to make better connections via bus to Halethorpe so that not every person has to drive and park. Consolidating it with St Denis would not improve the situation for those riders either.

There is a tremendous amount of TOD happening around Muirkirk. Busy with commuters: Laurel Main Street, Dorsey, Savage.

My understanding is that they were going to move the stop from Laurel Main to Laurel Racetrack, but the PEOPLE are at Laurel Main. So they abandoned that idea.

In the two years I've been riding the Camden line, I had seen a pretty good increase at Camden. The weird thing is that transit service to the Camden Station is really poor. There is the light rail, but that only runs north south. Very few people access the Camden station to ride MARC off the light rail. It's a significant hike to a bus stop from Camden and of course nothing is synchronized to enable smooth transfers. It's a head scratcher as to why there is zero bus service to the regional commuter rail station in South Baltimore.

They should make a transit hub at Camden utilizing the surface lot just to the north and make the street between the Hilton and Camden Yards a "transitway" Some east west city buses and commuter buses (395 is right there )could queue up there and the facility could provide a condition connection between a variety of modes. It also would likely land a tenant like a take out restaurant or coffee shop in the old Camden terminal that once housed the museum that is now vacant. Let's hope that the new station under construction can accommodate some of that