Results tagged “vre”

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.

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 country, like high fuel costs and aging trains, the 7 percent hike seems a lot easier to swallow than a 15 percent one. Keep in mind, though, that originally VRE was talking about two big rounds of increases: 15 percent in January and then possibly another 10 percent in July, 2009. With this new plan to raise fares by only 7 percent in January, it seems even more likely that a second increase could be in store next summer.

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.

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 new baseball stadium and being able to cope with a huge uptick in riders - the general public tends to lose sight of them when incidents involving heat-bent tracks and derailments come into play. Which is why yesterday's dissemination of information relating to the commotion on seemingly every line of the system - not your fault, by the way; a power outage caused by faulty Dominion Power feeders is what knocked out power to the Dunn Loring station - is so potentially damaging to the good work that you do.

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 claim that without the Anacostia line, you'll never see a streetcar on H Street NE - without a doubt the place to put a line in the city - and that if this is the cost to get a line there, then so be it. Others say that it's foolish to force a line in Anacostia, when Columbia Pike's streetcar could be just as, if not more successful. Others are simply stuck in between, keeping the faith that either way will lead to more options.

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 up over 11 percent compared to this time last year, the reason stops were skipped on June 6 was because a freight train broke down outside of Leeland, and one train skipped 2 stations to allow all trains to get back on schedule for the morning commute. People standing at the platform at the missed stops were picked up by a subsequent train shortly afterward.