Last month, we told you how the Virginia Railway Express commuter lines were discussing raising their fares by 15 percent in January, even though they had just raised them 3 percent across the board in July. Well today WTOP reports that VRE CEO Dale Zehner will this week recommend a fare increase of only 7 percent. Given that the reasons for the increase are similar to problems facing transit and commuter rail agencies across the......

Virginia Railway Express had its busiest month ever in August, hauling an average load of more than 15,000 people per day. It's both a testament to the metro area's thirst for mass transit and a startling turnaround for an agency that was shedding customers left and right as recently as last year. Heck, the system is even looking into possibly expanding its reach. But there's big trouble rumbling under the surface. According to the VRE's......

Metro, you know that we love you, and that sometimes, life isn't fair - after all, you've had kind of a rough year so far, and us transit buffs, we understand that. But you surely can understand that when we start seeing comments like, "I'm planning to go back to car pooling. Really. I'm getting fed up with this," we worry. Because for all your wild successes this year in getting people to the......

Jim Graham's hearing on the Anacostia streetcar project has come and gone - the results? Everything's pretty much the way it was before. Barring any last minute legislative derailments, the Anacostia line should go on as planned. There is, however, a small new can of worms opening. The debate centers around whether or not the line will actually achieve anything other than pushing forward streetcar development to other parts of the city. Some transit types......

WTOP points out new rates have gone into effect for Virginia Railway Express. You can look at the full new rate plan here, but the bottom line is that nearly every fare for single trips went up about 3 percent today. And in an update to a story we linked to late last month, a VRE spokesperson got in touch with us to clarify that while ridership on the commuter rail system has indeed gone......