MTA Communications Issue Causes MARC Train Delays

BALTIMORE — A systemwide outage led to multiple MARC train cancellations and delays during the morning commute on Friday. It stranded many travelers for hours.

Things were up and running by the afternoon, but delays still came here and there.

The delays began around 4 a.m., but in two hours all MARC trains came to a screeching halt.

One of the stranded travelers was Roxanne, who just trying to get home to Perryville. Her original train was going to leave Penn Station at 5:15 a.m.

"Everything kept on getting cancelled," she said. "Then they just told me they don't know when the next one will be."

Some travelers took the morning headache in stride.

"System outages happen everywhere, they happen at the airports, they happen at banks. If you use software to operate your system, eventually you're going to have a system outage," said Dewayne, he was trying to get to Washington, D.C., for work.

The MTA said that the technical issues began after system maintenance was conducted overnight, but the issue was resolved a little before 10 a.m. By the afternoon, all lines were running on reduced schedules.

However, delays still happened, with some trains seeing delays of nearly 20 minutes.

Some travelers hope in light of this mess that some fix ups could be coming down the line.

"I know there's a lot of upgrades that need to be made to mass transit, so I'm hoping maybe this will wake people up and help put more investment in," said Christina Peters-Luster.

While trains were suspended, the MTA worked with Amtrak to accommodate passengers traveling between Penn Station, BWI, New Carrollton, or Washington.

The agency is urging everyone to follow their twitter account for constant updates.