Going to Inauguration? MARC Is Offering Rides From Germantown

Attending the presidential inaugural ceremonies may be as easy as hopping a train from Germantown.

Maryland Transit Administration is offering special MARC train service on the Penn Line — which runs from Baltimore to Washington, DC—and on its Brunswick Line, which passes through Germantown on its way to Union Station in the District, state transit officials announced Friday.

Four Brunswick Line trains were scheduled to travel to Washington, the first train leaving Germantown at 8:35 a.m. and the final train departing at 10:02.

The commemorative roundtrip ticket costs $25 and went on sale Monday. Regular MARC tickets will not be accepted on Inauguration Day.  

A one-way ticket from Germantown to Washington, DC, usually costs $5, according to the Maryland Transit Administration’s online fare calculator.

Details about the special tickets and scheduling are available on Maryland Transit Administration’s website, mta.maryland.gov.

Preparations are underway for the country’s 57th inauguration on Jan. 21, 2013, when President Obama will take a symbolic oath of office outside the Capitol Building.

Tourism officials don’t think this year’s inauguration will fetch same crowd it did in 2009, when Obama became the first black president in U.S. History.  Obama's first inauguration set a record as the largest turnout for any event in the history of the nation's capital, The Huffington Post reports.

But hotels are filling up and local transit officials are making preparations, too.

Metro set up a special Twitter account and has already started taking orders for commemorative Inauguration Day SmartTrip cards, Lake Ridge Patch has reported. The cards cost $15—only $1 more than a paper pass, according to WMATA. The nearest Metro station to Germantown is the Shady Grove station near Gaithersburg, a stop on the Red Line.