The MARC Train, or Maryland Area Regional Commuter, serves about 250 West Virginians who live in Berkeley and Jefferson Counties.
The train has been serving the area for more than 30 years, but Maryland has always paid the bills. West Virginia was only responsible for upkeep of its three West Virginia stations.
Recently, that changed.
For the last two years, Maryland has requested a little more than $3 million in funding – otherwise, they’d end the service into West Virginia.
Below is an extended version of this interview:
In 2018, the West Virginia Legislature secured $1.5 million, and Maryland accepted it. This year, lawmakers successfully put $1.1 million in the budget, but it’s unclear if Maryland will accept the offer.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting spoke with Del. Paul Espinosa, R-Jefferson, the House Majority Whip and member of the House Finance Committee, to discuss the future of MARC in West Virginia.
Hundreds of West Virginians travel from the Eastern Panhandle to Maryland or Washington D.C. every weekday for work. These commuters catch the Maryland-based MARC train, or Maryland Area Regional Commuter.
But during this year’s West Virginia Legislative session, lawmakers debated the future of the MARC train in the state.
Maryland threatened to discontinue MARC service to West Virginia unless certain provisions were met.
Commuting on the MARC Train
It’s almost 7 o’clock in the morning. The MARC train approaches Harpers Ferry; its last West Virginia stop before making several stops in Maryland. The final destination of the morning is Union Station in Washington, D.C.
The closer we get to D.C., the fuller the train gets. From Martinsburg to Union Station – it’s a two-hour commute.
The passengers from West Virginia say the MARC train is one of the main reasons they decided to live or stay in West Virginia — like 27-year-old Matt Myers.
“When we were looking for places, we found one that was only a mile-in-a-half from the train station,” he said, “so it’s been helpful having the MARC extend out that far. It definitely helped inform my choice to live there.”
The train is comfortable, well-lit, clean and air-conditioned. There are big windows and power outlets to charge a phone or a laptop. There’s a bathroom in the first car, and I’m told there’s one car labeled the “Quiet Car,” where you aren’t supposed to talk.
Some passengers read, some work or chat, and others sleep.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The MARC train’s Brunswick Line parked at the Martinsburg Train Station.
Another Martinsburg resident, 29-year-old Amber Darlington, actually moved from Maryland to Martinsburg for the lower cost of living and access to the MARC train for her job.
“My partner and I really couldn’t afford to live in Germantown for what we wanted,” she said, “so we chose Martinsburg mainly because of the train, and we could actually afford to live there.”
Maryland Demands Funding from West Virginia
The MARC train serves 300 to 400 West Virginia residents just like Matt and Amber every weekday.
For more than 30 years, Maryland paid for the trains into West Virginia, while West Virginia paid for its three local stations — Martinsburg, Duffields and Harpers Ferry.
But after 2010, Maryland requested funding from West Virginia if it wanted to keep the MARC train in the Eastern Panhandle.
In 2013, the Commuter Rail Access Fund was created by the West Virginia Legislature for this purpose…but each budget year, for one reason or another, funding was never added.
So, Maryland began imposing a fare increase on tickets purchased in West Virginia, and over time, fewer and fewer stops were scheduled in-state.
Jefferson County Delegate Riley Moore says in 2018, Maryland insisted that West Virginia lawmakers take action to fill the line item in the budget.
“MARC says, okay, look, you all have never paid us for this, and here’s the bill, and the bill originally starts off from Maryland at $3.8 million,” Moore said.
Maryland told West Virginia lawmakers if they didn’t receive that $3.8 million, MARC service in West Virginia would end as early as July of this year.
During the session, lawmakers didn’t find $3.8 million, but they did secure $1.5 million for MARC services…which Maryland accepted, for now.
“In the intervening year,” Moore explained, “what we are going to do is bring all the stakeholders to the table, which would be the counties, the towns, the state, and the federal level to see where we can find funding from each source to have a permanent solution here for funding for the MARC train and also expand that service.”
Moore says he’s hopeful they can come to an agreement, and notes ticket prices will not increase on West Virginia riders this year.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
“Martinsburg, WV” flashes on the destination sign inside the MARC train car. Martinsburg is the first stop for MARC’s Brunswick Line Eastbound and the last stop for MARC’s Brunswick Line Westbound.
Future of MARC in West Virginia
Meanwhile, commuters like Matt Myers and Amber Darlington are still concerned about losing the train.
What would they do without the service?
“[Make] the longer commute to Brunswick? But that [would be] about 45 minutes in the car, an hour-in-a-half on the train, and then 30 minutes on the bike,” Myers said, “so I’m not sure. We [might consider] moving; kind of hard to even think about really.”
“I moved to West Virginia because of the train, because of the MARC train,” Darlington explained, “and if they cut the service, I’d have to drive to work, which is 65 miles one way, both ways, five days a week, and that’s going to take such a toll on my car, and I hate driving.”
The Maryland Department of Transportation’s Public Affairs Director Erin Henson was not available for an interview but said in a statement to West Virginia Public Broadcasting on April 5, 2018, “a formal agreement has not yet been signed,” however, the Department is working with the West Virginia State Rail Authority to come up with a deal.
***Editor’s Note: The headline was tweaked on April 12, 2018 for clarification.
After threatening to sue the state of Maryland, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has announced that Maryland is halting the permitting process that would have restricted West Virginia’s use of the Potomac River.
News outlets report that Morrisey had told Maryland officials in early November that the state of Maryland could not impose regulations on West Virginia’s rights to draw from the river.
Morrisey announced Wednesday that Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh and Maryland Secretary of the Environment Ben Grumbles said in a Nov. 22 letter that West Virginia users are not required to get permits from Maryland.
Morrisey had argued that his state needs the water to support a $500 million manufacturing plant that P&G plans to build on its side of the Potomac.
The Maryland Department of the Environment says Verso Corp. will pay a $10,000 settlement for two chemical spills that tainted the Potomac River last fall.
Agency spokesman Jay Apperson said Thursday the amount is the same as a fine the agency proposed in February.
The spills at Verso’s paper mill in the western Maryland town of Luke included 9,500 gallons of synthetic latex on Sept. 23 and some concentrated red dye on Oct. 2.
The chemicals went through a wastewater treatment plant before reaching the river. The latex spill prompted two West Virginia communities to close their drinking water intakes before Maryland regulators concluded there was no public health threat.
Apperson says Memphis, Tennessee-based Verso had complied with agency requests for measures to reduce the chance of future spills.
In June of 2007, Victoria Snyder, then age-nine, attended a week-long church camp. During the week she began to feel sick – muscle aches, lethargy, headaches. A doctor at the camp thought it might be the flu, but she didn’t get better. So after camp, her mother, Christine, took her to see a pediatrician.
“The pediatrician found a bullseye ring on her stomach,” said Christine. “I felt a lot of relief when they put her on antibiotics because with Lyme disease, we knew what we were dealing with.”
In 2007, there were only 84 confirmed cases of Lyme Disease in West Virginia – most of which were in the Snyder’s county, Berkeley. Seven years later, that number almost doubled to 136. The next year, 2015, it doubled again.
“The number of cases are increasing,” said West Virginia University pediatric infectious disease specialist Kathy Moffett. “It’s not that we haven’t diagnosed it before, it’s that it hasn’t been here before.”
Moffett said experts think that the mountains in eastern West Virginia have long been a barrier against the ticks (West Virginia’s border states of Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia all have high levels of Lyme).
Others disagree, saying Lyme has always been in West Virginia, it just wasn’t well diagnosed.
“I can tell you I don’t think there’s a great wall of West Virginia and all these ticks stop at these borders. It’s rampant in Virginia, it’s rampant in Pennsylvania, it’s rampant here,” said Doctor Erika Pallie, a West Virginia-based physician who used to work for WVU.
“The presumption is that for some reason West Virginia still doesn’t have Lyme disease,” she said. “I would propose this is a self-fulling fallacy. Doctors are told there’s no Lyme disease here, therefore they refuse to test people for it, therefore they don’t find it, therefore they don’t report it.”
Nationwide, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention registers about 300,000 new cases of Lyme disease each year. More than 96 percent of those cases are being reported in 14 states. (West Virginia does not yet officially make that list, although if trends continue, it might in the coming years.)
The Lyme Controversy
Doctors Pallie and Moffett have both seen and treated Lyme in West Virginia. But they view the disease in very different ways.
Moffett adheres to the Infectious Disease Society of America’s recommended guidelines for Lyme, which basically state that Lyme is hard to get and easy to treat.
Pallie, who has personally had Lyme, believes that the IDSA’s definition of Lyme is too narrow. Rather, she follows guidelines from the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, which state there are more than 100 strains of the bacteria that cause Lyme in the United States. Therefore, a cocktail of antibiotics (rather than a single round of one) may be needed to treat Lyme.
The International Lyme Society’s research has also indicated that the official, primary, test used for the disease is only about 65 percent sensitive. So when possible, Pallie would order a different one. (Other, more sensitive tests are generally not covered by insurance as preliminary screening.)
Credit Dollar Photo Club
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A classic bullseye rash, which often indicates Lyme disease.
But Moffett defends the IDSA’s guidelines saying, “[T]hese [guidelines] have been studied very closely and carefully to look at the science behind how accurate these tests are – are they valid and the science says they are valid. There are a minority of people who feel that their disease may not be accurately diagnosed who are looking for answers of symptoms that may have nothing to do with Lyme.”
For several years, those minority of patients flooded Pallie’s clinic in Morgantown.
“When you come down to it, I believe patients have the right to be informed of the risks of their alternative choices,” said Pallie. She said she told her patients “[L]ook this is the deal. This is what you have, this is the infectious disease standard of care and the ILADS standard of care, and these are the risks of this treatment.”
Pallie said eventually her supervisors at WVU asked her to stop diagnosing and treating Lyme or sending out any more specialty tests. Instead, Pallie says, she was instructed to send patients she suspected had Lyme to the infectious disease specialists at WVU.
Pallie says she understands that decision since she was hired as a family doctor, not a Lyme disease specialist. Nevertheless, she resigned from her position at WVU because she thought it was unethical not to treat patients she really did think have Lyme.
Still Sick? It Must Not Be Lyme
For one thing, many of the patients Pallie saw had stories like Victoria Snyder’s. Back in 2007, after her first round of antibiotics, Victoria didn’t get better. By November of that year, Christine took Victoria to an infectious disease specialist in Winchester, Virginia, who recommended that she be admitted to hospital and given six weeks of intravenous antibiotics.
“When she finished the IV antibiotics, she definitely had less of the cloudy thinking – we were just hoping that her energy would catch up,” said Christine.
It never did. Victoria is now 17 and a senior in high school. She tests negative for the bacteria that causes Lyme, but most days, it is all she can do to get out of bed and get through the school day.
Christine said the doctors she took Victoria to said “she was cured of Lyme disease and it was official. They weren’t willing to look into what other issues might be causing the fatigue.”
Christine also said her insurance refused to continue paying for treatments since Victoria no longer tested positive for Lyme. But she doesn’t see how the current health issues Victoria is having could not be related to Lyme. ”Victoria was a normal, high energy, 9-year-old kid. There was a change in her and it has never been the same since she got sick,” she said.
According to the Infectious Disease Society, there is no such thing as chronic Lyme disease. WVU’s Moffett said continuing to treat for Lyme when there’s no evidence of the disease may be masking the true problem. Also, she said, prescribing months of antibiotics may do more harm than good. But for patients like Victoria and doctors like Pallie, the question remains: If they are cured, why are they still sick?
Despite their differences, both Pallie and Moffett agree that Lyme disease is being diagnosed at a higher rate in West Virginia. They also both say that’s it’s preventable and that the best way to tackle Lyme disease is to take steps (such as wearing pants, checking for ticks during the warm months, and wearing bug spray) that keep that the bite from happening in the first place.
Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from the Benedum Foundation.
A 21-year-old Maryland man has been sentenced in West Virginia to three years and five months in federal prison for possessing stolen firearms.
Gaithersburg resident Nevyou Alemu was sentenced Wednesday in federal court in Clarksburg.
Prosecutors say Alemu and two other people stole about 14 firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition from a home in New Milton, West Virginia, in 2014 before returning to Maryland. Alemu was caught in Doddridge County with a .22-caliber pistol and a 20-gauge shotgun.
