Frederick County
Frederick MARC train station
Frederick County is served by the MARC Brunswick Line with four stations, two in the county and one each in Frederick and Brunswick.
The Livable Frederick Master Plan, the county's comprehensive plan, encourages TOD for creating high-density mixed use development near transit and calls for implementing TOD overlay zones for transit station areas. The county also created Transit-Friendly Design Guidelines for commercial and residential developments. The 2010 Comprehensive Plan includes a proposed transitway along the I-270 Corridor from Urbana to Frederick City; however, the land uses for the areas near the proposed stations are not well addressed to support TOD.
The city of Frederick is served by the MARC Brunswick Line, with one station near Frederick’s downtown. Transit reliability and frequency were cited as a significant barrier to TOD, as well as a lack of policy. The city’s comprehensive plan addresses the transportation and land use policies that support potential TOD and designates “planned mixed-use” to “promote the MARC train station vicinity as a multimodal transportation hub and a mixed-use development area.” The plan also encourages development that meets Transit-Friendly Design standards for various transit areas including the MARC station vicinity. Although the zoning and subdivision regulations, do not define a transit-oriented development category, the zoning for the station area includes Downtown Business, mixed-use, Carroll Creek Overlay Zone and other types that all will help create development compatible with a commuter station area.
In addition, the city is developing a vision for the revitalization of its East Side, for which supporting TOD near the MARC station and other places is a major goal. In recent years, several major development projects – Frederick Visitor Center, FCPS Central Office, City Parking Garage #5, Monocacy Canning and Easter Street Gateway – have been built near the station and could be catalysts to attract TOD.
The 2010 City of Brunswick Comprehensive Plan calls for TOD overlay zoning for the MARC station area to promote greater development density and mixed use. In 2007, the city created Transit Oriented Design Guidelines that tout the benefits of transit-oriented design and encourage design elements that make commercial and residential developments more transit oriented. The city zoning code was amended in 2013 to include a TOD Overlay Zone.
