Protesters delivered a bag of coal to Gov. Wes Moore on Saturday.

Phil Ateto, an activist with a flair for dramatic gestures, marched with Coal Free Curtis Bay from Annapolis’ City Dock to the governor’s mansion. Dressed as Santa, he and others posed with the bag as they called on the Democratic governor to shut down the CSX Coal Terminal. Coal dust, they said, is threatening public health.

Coal? Christmas? Get it?

Annapolis is the seat of state, county and city government. Talking to your lawmakers face-to-face or staging a piquant protest is a part of the process. You just have figure out how to get there first.

“Getting everyone to Annapolis is quite the team effort with a few folks borrowing or renting vans and several volunteers and a few Curtis Bay folks giving rides in their personal vehicles,” Ateto said Friday. “If we get unexpected mass turnout in the community, we would be screwed and most likely have to buy Ubers/Lyfts for people.”

Most people, figure out some way to make the trip. You can get to Annapolis without a car, too. It’s just hard.

“Think about how undemocratic our state government is because no one can get there,” said Diane Wittner, who’s been studying ways to expand in-state rail for her small advocacy group, Fix Maryland Rail.

Consider the options.

If you’re coming from Baltimore, you can step onto the MTA Local Link 70 bus anywhere from the Patapsco Light Rail Station in Halethorpe to Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold. It leaves about once every hour.

The bus makes stops on Ritchie Highway before dropping passengers off a few steps from the State House on Church Circle — you and your rabble can expect to be on the bus with your homemade protest signs for 90 minutes or more. Hardly rousing.

There are commuter routes from Annapolis to Washington and Baltimore, too. But they head out from the state capital in the morning and back in the afternoon or evening. That doesn’t work for a noon rally.

Greyhound and its partner FlixBus are an option from Washington’s Union Station. They offer a daily connection from downtown Annapolis to Union Station. It’s only 45 minutes, and unlike the state commuter routes, you can make the trip to Annapolis in the morning and back in the afternoon.

You could take the MARC commuter rail, boarding the Brunswick line between Western Maryland and Union Station, then catch that daily Greyhound to Annapolis. Or you could take the MARC Penn Line from Baltimore County to D.C. and get off at the BWI Rail Station in Odenton.

From there, hop on the new Crofton Connector. It’s an Anne Arundel County weekday service from the station to the Annapolis Mall hourly, a trip that takes about an hour. The county also connects the Cromwell Light Rail Station in Glen Burnie and the mall.

Live in Ocean City? You could grab the Bay Runner Shuttle, traveling from South Division Street to the BWI Rail Station, but the round trip is $300 one way.

Depending on where you get off the bus, you might need transportation to the State House. Annapolis Transit offers several routes as well as some on-demand service, Go Time, through an app, Transigo.

Confused? You should be. Imagine making all these connections for the first time.

Maybe you should drive.

It wasn’t always like this.

It’s been 75 years since the last passenger train connecting Annapolis to other cities shut down. It’s now one of just a handful of state capitals in the nation without the service.

People like Wittner dream about expanding in-state rail services. Virginia has been buying up old rights of way to expand its service.

“Other states are beginning to do the things we need to do,” she said.

Adding a rail link to Annapolis might take millions, or even billions, that the state doesn’t have. It’s already cutting back on mass transit spending as it faces a $2 billion budget shortfall. But there are other reasons to at least dream about it, from congested roads to the impact of all those cars on the climate.

“As someone who doesn’t own a car, it is not possible at all for me to get to Annapolis,” said Lindsey Mendelson, the Maryland Sierra Club’s senior transportation representative.

Her group wants the state to invest more in transit to cut pollution but also because of the costs of getting around. Transportation ranks second behind only housing on personal expenses. They’ll rally to convince lawmakers on Feb. 4 in Annapolis.

Anne Arundel County is expanding services. Just a decade ago, it offered a few shuttles for seniors. Now, it serves 300,000 passengers a year and is buying bigger buses. It connects riders with routes through an app, Passigo.

“We had no bus stop signs — that was my first big task,” said Sam Snead, county director of transportation for the last three years.

Next is a $7.7 million transit center at the Truman Park & Ride lot just outside Annapolis, with construction starting as soon as 2026. It would connect with the network of routes around the populous north and western parts of the county, but also the MTA, Annapolis transit, Greyhound and other inter-city services.

“It would be the first dedicated bus center in Anne Arundel County,” Snead said.

If the county isn’t thinking about rail, it is being creative.

It is developing plans for a commuter ferry network linking Annapolis to Kent Island and Baltimore. That could launch in 2027, and create a transit link that would cut travel time across the Chesapeake Bay to 20 minutes. The Baltimore link would take about an hour more.

Others are thinking about ways to improve, too. Maryland just launched Bmore Bus, a study of ways to upgrade its transit network including Annapolis, and the city is updating its five-year transportation plan. It isn’t clear how much demand there is among passengers for more connections outside Annapolis.

“That’s hard to say; they don’t tell us,” said Markus Moore, the city’s transportation director.

In the end, Ateto and Coal Free Curtis Bay decided their impromptu fleet of personal vehicles wasn’t working. Instead, they turned to the only real connection for Maryland political activists heading to the capital.

“Somehow,” he said, “we managed to charter a coach bus from Curtis Bay.”