By Baltimore Sun Editorial Board, Baltimore Sun, March 12, 2020
What if you could board a MARC rail commuter train in Baltimore’s Pennsylvania Station and an hour and 15 minutes later get off within walking distance of Amazon’s second headquarters in Northern Virginia? That’s not so far-fetched. MARC’s Penn Line already delivers passengers from Baltimore to Washington’s Union station in about an hour. Arlington County is tantalizingly close. Even simply extending MARC service to L’Enfant Plaza with its easy connections to five (count them, five) Metro subway lines as well as the Virginia Railway Express (VRE) would be a fantastic advancement. And remember, those are high-paying jobs at the end of this journey: HQ2 alone is expected to add 25,000 jobs to Pentagon City with average salaries around $150,000 per year. And it’s no longer some distant pipe dream. Construction on the complex is expected to start soon and to be finished in 2023.