MD: MTA to offer free MARC, commuter bus rides for federal workers during shutdown

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore announced Friday that the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) will offer free MARC and commuter bus service to all Maryland federal workers during the government shutdown.

“You are not going to have to worry about your transportation because this administration can’t figure it out,” Moore said during a Howard County fair in Columbia. “In the state of Maryland, we see you. We support you. We stand with you. And there is nothing that we will not do to make sure that we’re all going to be okay.”

The governor was joined by Rep. Sarah Elfreth, Howard County Executive Calvin Ball, Del. Jessica Feldman, and Maryland Labor Secretary Portia Wu.

“People still need to get around and live their lives, and people rely on public transportation to do that,” Wu told The Baltimore Sun following Moore’s announcement. “Transportation is one of the major costs, and frankly … one of the major barriers people have in job search, so being able to have free transportation really is a critical help. Everything helps at this point.”

Lili Melendez-Dendy, a Howard County government workforce consultant who was manning one of the booths at the resource fair and heard Moore’s announcement, said the free service will help connect current and former federal workers with community resources such as child care and housing assistance.

“That’s one less thing that they have to worry about, you know, within their limited resources that they have now and their budget,”  Melendez-Dendy told The Sun.

Any individual with a federal ID badge can ride for free by showing their badge to the operator, according to a press release.

Moore, Elfreth, and Ball also used the announcement to criticize the ongoing shutdown and those in Washington responsible for it, with Moore calling it “inhumane, cruel, staggering, and unbelievably petty.”

“The federal government is doing something the states can’t do — Maryland’s not going to shut down,” Moore said. “We’re going to do everything we can do for as long as we can, but honestly, we need the federal government to reopen.”

Elfreth echoed that sentiment, urging her colleagues to reach a bipartisan budget deal that protects Americans’ health care.

“Out of the last 100 days, Congress has only been in session 19. That is shameful. It is not what the American people deserve,” Elfreth said Friday. “We have to come together. We have to come to a bipartisan budget deal that reopens the government.”

Maryland, home to about 160,000 federal workers and more than 60 federal agencies, is more vulnerable to the shutdown than many other states. Since the Trump administration took office in January, 15,000 Maryland federal workers — more than in any other state — have lost their jobs due to reduction-in-force initiatives, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Marylanders make up a large share of the federal workforce, so we fully understand the financial strain many of our riders are experiencing,” said Maryland Department of Transportation Acting Secretary Samantha J. Biddle in a press release Friday. “Free rides on MARC and Commuter Bus ensure that federal workers who are still reporting to the office have one less thing to worry about.”

Moore said that since the shutdown began Oct. 1, there have been more than 75,000 visits to the State of Maryland website dedicated to providing federal workers with resources during the shutdown, and more than 2,000 people have applied for unemployment insurance.

“Maryland is fighting, and we are fighting for Maryland. We are seeing, every single day, more and more Marylanders who are being hurt by this,” Moore said. “So I just really want Washington to understand and see what we’re seeing — the real pain that this is causing and it’s so completely unnecessary.”

State Senate Minority Leader Steve Hershey, a Republican, said the announcement, however, “feels like another page out of the liberal playbook.”

“It’s a symbolic gesture designed to appear compassionate, but it doesn’t address the real issue: a federal government that can’t manage its own budget. If these employees aren’t commuting to work during the shutdown, then we have to ask—what exactly are we subsidizing?” Hershey told The Sun Friday. “For my constituents, this decision does little to help. Most of our residents don’t rely on MTA transit to begin with, so this is yet another Annapolis announcement that sounds good in Baltimore or Washington but has no meaningful impact on the rest of Maryland. Instead of performative giveaways, the governor should be focused on policies that strengthen our economy, improve transportation infrastructure statewide, and respect the taxpayers footing the bill for these political stunts.”

Free MTA rides are the latest in Moore’s efforts to support Maryland workers affected by the shutdown. On Oct. 6, the Maryland Department of Labor announced that the state would accept $700 loan applications for federal workers who are working without pay during the shutdown.

The first 100 checks were distributed Friday morning, according to Wu, who said almost 1,000 Marylanders have applied. She told The Sun that she expects hundreds more loans to be distributed in the coming days.

When the shutdown first began, the governor also directed state agencies to deploy “contingency plans” to keep federally funded programs — like Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) — continually operating.

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