Woody there is a old railroad line in Fredrick that would really bing in the passangers MARC it comes out of the downtown area of Fredrick and then runs along US 15 and Interstate 270 right around their mixing interchange and follows US 15 for two miles before going out of sight. I did once go into downtown Fredrick and it is something sleeping and waiting for passanger cars. There is also another railroad that runs from Pennsyvinia to Fredrick Mayland and it goes though some very tight pedestrain freindly town cores and it needs passanger trains too. I have a friend who has to drive over a hour and a half a day to get to Washingtion from Pennsyvinia. While most of these rail lines are very near main highways and active towns and yet they sit unused.

I remember hearing romurs that they want to add 4 billon a year vs the old 1 billon a year to meet the demands of the sucessful railroad stimulus funding. Everyone from both parties is trying to get more funding to their states rail projects. Virginia Railroad Express is waiting for funding to extend passanger rail from Washingtion DC’s core to out past US Route 15.

What they’ll need is some billions to work with. They got the ROW and the passengers waiting. As this Great Recession rolls on and unemployment remains at 10% or 16%, depending on how you measure it, we may need a second stimulus program twice as big as this year’s. We’ll need the trains and it looks like we’ll need the work.

That’s *capital costs*. If the LRT has lower operating costs than BRT, it may pay for those higher “costs” within a couple of years. With 42,000 daily users, most of whom are commuters, the savings could be enormous.

I haven’t looked up the operating cost numbers on this project, but suffice it to say they weren’t in this article. And since that is crucial for any comparison….

I

Off-peak, even a bus with 50,000 daily riders, which this bus won’t have, can only support 4-5 minutes, which translates to 12-15 minutes on the outlying segments. This is on the outer edge of frequent.