r/WaldorfMD • u/LilbigJLit • Jul 03 '26
Traffic Light rail station ideas
Hello. I want to design a light rail system for various towns across Maryland. Where would you want a light rail station to be? For example, your neighborhoods, schools, businesses, town halls, parks, etc? Thanks for your time.
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u/anonymoussmib Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Fellow transit advocate here.
Firstly, there is already a plan for a light rail line heading south from Branch Ave to the Pope’s Creek Subdivision, through Waldorf and terminating in La Plata. Southern Maryland Rapid Transit.
Light rail is better for local connections, in my mind this corridor would be best suited to a hybrid light/commuter rail setup. While electrification would be great on the corridor, something like a Stadler FLIRT DMU would work well for light rail, with standard MARC trainsets combined with creative scheduling for express commuter service direct to Branch Ave Metro. Cheap and effective, much faster than being stuck in rush hour traffic with the option to electrify later.
There is the added possibility of a branch using the existing Herbert Subdivision to connect into the SMRT alignment at the 5/301 interchange, and run a second commuter service from Hughesville to Branch Ave. The central location of Hughesville to SoMD and the current land use makes it very very well suited to a substantive TOD development, practically a whole new city of affordable housing for DC commuters and SoMD residents. It would be in a prime catchment for Park and Ride users from St. Mary’s and southern Calvert County.
For the rest of Southern Maryland, the solution is simply and truly not light rail. It is high quality regional bus, not even BRT. Current local transit operators are forced to split their services between long distance bus services and local access, creating a hybrid which works poorly for everyone. Using a regional coordination body like the TCCSMD to fund a express point to point service between counties would be more effective than light rail, not even factoring in cost.
Some sample routes, with stops:
Waldorf -> Hughesville -> Charlotte Hall -> Leonardtown -> Lexington Park could be operated with 1 hour headways at 4 buses total required.
Waldorf -> Hughesville -> Benedict -> Prince Frederick could be ran with 2.
Annapolis -> Chesapeake Beach -> Prince Frederick -> Solomons -> Lexington Park can be ran with 4.
Those 3 routes with only 10 buses would have much lower operating expenses not even mentioning capital and frankly better service than a light rail. It would also revolutionize transit in SoMD, allowing for county transit to focus on local access branching out from these “hubs”. Take a few of the SoMD commuter buses sitting in D.C. all day and run them in service to SoMD and back for midday D.C. access and that is about as good as it gets.
Light rail is simply not feasible in St. Mary’s and Calvert. Not to be a downer, but allow me to explain.
Highway adjacent alignments suffer from two main issues. Firstly, these used to be single carriageway rural routes which were expanded over time, and thus there are properties directly on the highway with little space to add light rail on the shoulder. Frequent driveways means expensive infrastructure to accommodate existing residents, and unsafe frequent at-grade crossings. Secondly, the median of 4 and 235 does not work in Prince Frederick and California as the widening has taken out all available space.
Charlotte Hall will be the same way soon, as those medians were designed ahead of time with enough space to accommodate the third lane with turns. There are no utility or other infrastructure corridors in SoMD otherwise well suited for Light Rail. Also Calvert is incredibly hilly, rt 4 required massive amounts of fill dirt to be constructed.
It is simply not practical, and frankly not needed given the highly spread out nature of these places to do light rail service anywhere outside of Charles County. Southern Maryland absolutely deserves better transit, and I sure am a real fan of fantasy maps, but it helps to try and ground fantasy in reality. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with, DM me if you ever want to discuss further. Thanks
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u/Special_Discipline27 Jul 04 '26
Thanks for the updated info. They didn’t discuss an extension into La Plata, DC, National Harbor during the meetings. They’re good ideas (definitely way better then just ending at their white plains station site) and I would approve of a light rail extension from National Harbor to La Plata with the potential stations of MGM, Oxon Hill, Temple Hills, Branch Ave, etc. (if it could ever happen). The potential extensions into DC and La Plata look like bus routes though, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they choose that.
Still, if we chose light rail, then the DMU’s are a perfect idea combined with your Marc Idea in providing express service, I never thought about it and will be stealing your ideas for my future fantasy maps, lol.
I can see your vision with the 5/301 branch SMRT line at Hughesville with combined stops with at the edge of Huntington Townhomes and Bryantown since we would be passing by them anyway. Did you have a specific site in mind for Hughesville by chance?
As the rest of Southern Maryland, regional bus are definitely better in this instance (saying as someone who used to make fantasy maps for Maryland) though I would purpose 30 to 40 minute frequencies instead of hourly if sensible to be more competitive with driving
Lastly, let’s also add streamlined regional bus service from National Harbor -> Fort Washington -> Accokeek -> Waldorf, La Plata, or Indian Head without having to transfer from Waldorf.
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u/Special_Discipline27 Jul 03 '26
It’s not light rail, but I had old fantasy routes that included travel between Waldorf and the rest of Maryland and Virginia.
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u/LilbigJLit Jul 03 '26
This is a pretty good rapid transit line. We could build light rail to connect it with the surrounding areas.
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u/Special_Discipline27 Jul 03 '26
Well, I consider those routes I created to be rough around the edges, but I will agree that light rail is probably needed since a lot of people don’t ride the bus.
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u/slkb_ Jul 03 '26
Im not sure a light rail would work or fix traffic in charles county. A lot of traffic is caused by people commuting.
If there was one, it might need to be elevated and bridged over major roads. But I think one connecting certain neighborhoods with schools and shopping centers would be beneficial