MARC/Metro/VRE TLC Rant
I commute from Baltimore to Alexandria everyday. This results in me needing to ride the MARC Penn Line in the morning and then, thanks to MARC-VRE scheduling issues I will mention again later on Inside Charm City, I have to take the Metro from Union Station to King Street.
In the afternoons, thanks to the MARC-VRE cross-honoring policy, I can ride the counter-commute on a VRE train that hits Alexandria at 5:52. At least one night a week I have to take Metro back to Union Station for the MARC train to Baltimore.
I buy the MARC Transit Link Card (TLC) every month for $280. $200 of that is for MARC and $80 of that is for unlimited rides on Metro (including Metrobus and all the other bus lines like DASH in Alexandria.) You can also ride the other MD MTA services like Light Rail and Metro with that card, so I hear.
I’ve been less than satisfied for several months with the form the TLC comes in. It’s a paper Metro Farecard which also doubles as the monthly MARC pass. It can get very ragged by the end of the month if you don’t have a holder to put it in. The traditional MARC pass holders are way too big for it and I don’t have an ID for work so no lanyard and holder to stick it in. This has only resulted in me having a card that was non-functional in the Metro once until now.
Unlike that one time when the card was in bad shape toward the end of a month, this was a brand new pristine TLC. I walked up to the fare gate at Union Station on Friday morning and slid the card into the slot and got the card spit out without the gate opening and a “See Station Manager” message.
I took the card to the manager, he did something with it and then just told me to go through the gate they walk people through. The same thing happened at the end of my ride at King St. and the manager there highlighted the dates on the one side of my TLC and told me I’d have to show my card all month.
CommuterDirect.com, where I purhcase the cards, has a phone number and also says I can go to the sales locations at Metro Center and the Pentagon to get a replacement card. I have yet to try this, but a coworker who had a regular farecard get demagnetized once told me he got the run-around trying that - i.e. they told him he had to call or e-mail.
So, I may be faced with a whole month of having station managers letting me in and out of the Metro system unless I get some resolution to this issue.
This brings up a question I’ve had for a while. Why can’t the monthly Metro portion of the MARC Transit Link card be directed to a Metro SmarTrip card? This would seem to be the simplest solution and one that would possibly save money.
I continue to buy the TLC because I have no choice. The issue I will discuss later at Inside Charm City will relate to one very slight schedule change that either MARC or VRE could make that would have me never buying a TLC again.
