Historic losses: DC to Annapolis by rail

Have you ever wondered why the H Street/Benning Road NE corridor is wider, flatter and straighter than most surrounding streets? The answer lies in a little-known chapter of mid-Atlantic railroad history that may also point a way towards a better transportation future for our region.

The Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Electric Railway (WB&A) provided passenger and freight service on an electrified route between its namesake cities from 1908 to 1935. The line provided a third rail route between Washington and Baltimore, complementing (and competing with) the Pennsylvania Railroad (which is now Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor) and the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O, now the MARC Camden Line).

The WB&A entered Washington from Seat Pleasant, MD, via Benning Road NE, which was widened and graded to accommodate the trains. It originally terminated at its own station (misnamed “White House Station”) at the “starburst” intersection of Bladensburg, H & 15th Streets and Maryland and Florida Avenues. Hechinger Mall on Benning Rd. NE in Carver/Langston was built on the site of the WB&A’s rail yard and maintenance shop.

Eventually, the line was extended west on H Street all the way to 15th Street NW at the Treasury building, sharing infrastructure with Capital Transit streetcars. At one point, the current site of the Greyhound/Peter Pan bus depot in NoMa was also a WB&A station.

The WB&A also offered direct train service from Baltimore to Annapolis, and riders from DC could disembark at Naval Academy Junction, near Odenton, and connect to Annapolis-bound trains (which also connected with the Pennsylvania at Odenton, and with the B&O at Annapolis Junction, the station for which is now called Savage).

Despite that a trip from downtown DC to Baltimore took an hour and 20 minutes on the WB&A, versus 50 minutes on the B&O, the WB&A remained popular for its cleanliness, lower fares, half-hourly service and better downtown terminal locations than the other two railroads. Imagine being able to hop on an electrified train in the heart of downtown DC and ride directly into the heart of downtown Baltimore.

The former WB&A right-of-way northeast from Seat Pleasant is mostly intact. It roughly paralleled what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Highway through Glenadren. Electric Avenue and Railroad Avenue in Glenn Dale are named for the former rail line over which they were paved, as is WB&A Road in Severn, near BWI Airport. Parts have been retained as a bike trail, with plans to extend the trail along the entire right-of-way from Lanham to Odenton.

The federally-funded construction of Defense Highway (U.S. 50) in the early 1950s, combined with improved service on the competing railroads, doomed WB&A’s service to DC, though the Baltimore-Annapolis section continued passenger service up to 1950, and freight service into the 1970s, as the Baltimore & Annapolis Railway (B&A). This right-of-way is now used by Maryland MTA light-rail trains as far south as Glen Burnie, and exists as a bike trail from there to Arnold, across the Severn River from Annapolis.

Today, by contrast, downtown-to-downtown service between the capital city and Charm City is offered only at weekday rush hours, while faster, more frequent daily Amtrak trains serve Penn Station, a fair hike from Baltimore’s downtown core (though now connected to it by light rail). If you want to take a train from either city to Annapolis, you’re out of luck.

From Baltimore, you can take light rail as far as Glen Burnie, then change for the number 14 bus, running on a roughly half-hourly schedule, with hour-and-a-half headways on Sundays.

But Washington’s only connection to the Maryland capital’s walkable downtown, universities and state government buildings — aside from changing at Baltimore or BWI Airport — are rush hour-only Maryland MTA commuter buses 922 & 950, and two daily Greyhound round-trips (one direct, one via Baltimore) that continue to Ocean City.

The Odenton-Annapolis WB&A line, which passed through the middle of what is now Westfield Mall on its way into Annapolis, is mostly lost. Restoring light rail service along either this right-of-way, or the old B&A south of Glen Burnie, would be less expensive than building a new one, but is likely to encounter significant NIMBY opposition.

Other options are to put rail in the median of U.S. 50 (not so conducive to walkability, but less likely to face the ire of NIMBYs), or to extend the Blue Line east from Largo, paralleling Central Avenue and Riva Road or Solomons Island Road. Via this alignment, the rail distance from Metro Center to Annapolis is only 5 miles greater than the rail distance from Metro Center to Dulles Airport via the Orange and Silver Lines.

The Maryland DOT should seek federal assistance to study options for rail service roughly paralleling heavily-congested U.S. 50, which would better connect the Annapolis area with the job centers on the Washington-Baltimore corridor. Some form of rail transit serving these communities would be a wise investment in a future where rising travel demand and more expensive gasoline will lead people along this corridor to seek a better travel alternative — and the walkable communities that would come with it.

Cross-posted at the National Association of Railroad Passengers (NARP) Blog. Special thanks to Ken B. for his research assistance.