Given the tax dollars that MARC commuter riders working in Washington, D.C., bring into the state, one would think it logical for Gov. Martin O'Malley to make it a priority to properly fund the MARC system so that its breakdown records were not so abysmal.

I've been riding the train for 11 years, and there has been a noticeable decline in service in the last four. If any of the commuter train systems that serve the greater New York area (Long Island Railroad, Metro North Railroad or the New Jersey Transit Path Train and the subway) suffered as many breakdowns as the MARC system, heads would roll because the trains weren't.

In Maryland, there is far too much tolerance of incompetence in the operation of the MARC system. Try a week's subscription to the MARC outage alert e-mails. You will feel as though your e-mail box has been hit by a tsunami of spam. The expanded call center idea is merely a further concession that things are bad and they aren't going to get better soon.

How about fixing the service so you can reduce the need for call service personnel? The governor is sorely out of touch. He talks about a "green" economy. Well, why should people abandon their cars for a lousy, inept, unaccountable MARC service? Don't just blame Amtrak for bad Penn Line service. The governor (or his attorney general) should enforce the contract or make a better one. How about some real problem solving?

Robert Krinsky, Baltimore