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Virginia Railway Express is thinking about no longer selling its discounted youth tickets because they believe more and more adults are abusing the system by pretending to be younger than they really are, the Examiner reports today. Currently, anyone under 21 can get VRE tickets for half-price, so it's not too hard to imagine a number of 20-somethings are getting away with paying less than they should. There will have to be a public hearing before anything more happens, but VRE is proposing raising the age of children who ride for free when accompanied by an adult to 10, up from 6, in order to make up for the change. The commuter rail agency estimates eliminating the youth discount could generate $300,000 per year.
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All they need is a couple of high-profile arrests and they'll have this problem licked. Like the DoD employees who were selling their Government-provided Metro cards on eBay for a profit. Random ID checks, police beat-downs, and taserings will make them think twice about fraudulent VRE purchases. Or you could just throw them from the train.
nah, we reserve throwing for mamma...
21 is the cut-off age for a children's fare? Damn, I feel young ... I could have gotten that 2 1/2 months ago!
Anyway, I doubt children are really all that big of a customer base for a commuter rail system that really just runs rush-hour service from suburbs to a city and back again. Something like Boston's commuter rail or the commuter rail systems in NYC might have to worry about that. But it just doesn't seem like VRE should even care about children on their system.
All the cool kids hop boxcars anyway. Or ride on the roof of the train and get into fights with their archnemeses. Maybe if they offered a hobo discount? Twenty-three cents buys you a ride on the undercarriage and all the Sterno and stale bread you can stomach before you go blind?
I totally thought it was children, too. Like, under 12.
But conductor, she told me she was over 18.
This may cut down on the potential for playing chicken with the trains.