To everyone’s knowledge and deep frustration, there is no through service at DC Union Station. To everyone’s knowledge and deep frustration, MARC and VRE service is frustratingly infrequent. This is a far-fetched attempt to rectify both problems, although I have no idea if turn-up-and-go frequencies between DC Union Station and Alexandria would be even remotely realistic, considering existing frequencies along that stretch of track.

 

Map initially based off this old, old Metro vision map from 1968, with extensions running to Burke, Germantown, Laurel, and Bowie (given the stop spacing in some places, I don’t think there’d be much call for an all-local service from Manassas stopping at every single station all the way to, say, Baltimore, but I have been wrong many, many times before). The idea to show Metro services in gray shamelessly stolen from Peter Dovak.

 

I also did a fantasy version of this map with a few more infill stations, a line whose tracks were torn up long ago, and a more extensive streetcar and Metro network than we’ll ever see in this life: