Halethorpe
West Baltimore is an intermediate station on the MARC Commuter Rail that opened on April 30, 1984. The station combined the former Edmonson Avenue (who's brick station depot is now a restaurant/corner store) a block north of the station and Frederick Road Station 1 ⅓ miles south of the station, the remains of staircases down to the former platforms at this station are still visible from the street.
The station was built before the ADA. It is the only low-level non-accessible station left on the Penn Line between Baltimore and Washington, DC and is located on an embankment. The station is due to be replaced with a high-level platform station as part of the project that will build the Frederick Douglas Tunnel. This is a replacement tunnel to the more than 150 year old Baltimore & Potomac Tunnel that dates back to the Civil War.
Today's station has two very short wooden low-level side platforms that can accommodate only one car stopping at the station in each direction with this car opening doors at either end of said train car. The station is located on a stretch of line that once housed five tracks with only four intact today. All passengers boarding Washington-bound trains must cross over this abandoned track, with a fence running between the platform and the track with openings only by two wooden level crossings to this track and the middle track in case a train needs to stop not on the local track. The Baltimore-bound platform is more normal with a tactile warning strip and wooden level crossings at each end of the platform to allow trains to open two doors and stop on the express tracks.
The platforms run between the bridges over Mulberry Street and Franklin Street as the embankment crosses over nearby streets. Signs tell passengers to use Franklin Street to connect between the transit center on the Baltimore side of the platforms and the Washington-bound platform.
The Washington-bound platform contains four blue bus stop-style shelters with benches inside them. A staircase leads down from the southern end of the platform to the center of a plaza formed by Franklin and Mulberry Street as these two wide one-way streets combine into one wide boulevard. There is another staircase towards the middle of the platform that leads down to the sidewalk of Franklin Street just before it crosses under the railroad and this sidewalk is signed as the connection to the Baltimore-bound platform and West Baltimore Transit Center.
The Baltimore-bound platform contains no shelters or amenities except a couple of very simple backless benches. To exit two wooden staircases that lead down to street level at the edge of the West Baltimore Transit Center. The West Baltimore Transit Center was built in the middle of land between Franklin and Mulberry Streets that had been cleared for the building of a freeway into Downtown Baltimore as an extension of I-70. The station would be located directly over I-70 if this freeway extension had ever been built. White suburbanites west of this poor minority area protested the freeway and I-70 now ends at Security Blvd 3 miles west of the train station with a parking lot built literally on the lanes that were designed to continue further east.
The station's bus loop is relatively simple with a single loop with sawtooth bus bays containing four simple bus shelters. The station has a total of 327 parking spaces in four parking lots. There is one tiny parking lot just north of the bus loop, with three additional parking lots located east of the station in the area that had been cleared for the freeway. These parking lots are across Smallwood Street from the station, followed by another parking lot across Pulaski Street, and a third across Payson Street, where the two-lane depressed in an open cut Franklin-Mulberry Expressway begins and this parking lot ends just before the bridge over the freeway of Monroe Street. The Franklin-Mulberry Expressway is today a completely unnecessary scar of urban renewal on the black neighborhood of West Baltimore. It runs for just one grade-separated mile with a wide median originally designed for Baltimore SubwayLink trains that may sometime be used as part of the right of way of the Red Line. The Franklin-Mulberry Expressway connects with no other interstate highways.
Photos 1-53: September 5, 2024;
