Good morning, Washington. DCist heard from a tipster Thursday night that “several hundred” people were planning to converge on McPherson Square Saturday morning for a sister protest to New York’s “Occupy Wall Street.” NBC Washington reports that at the height of participation Saturday, the group called “Occupy DC” amounted to about 40 to 50 people whose protests were often drowned out by a women’s percussion practice across the square.

Photo by Grundlepuck 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…

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…

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…

>> Vandals armed only with a U-shaped bicycle lock and a sense of irony managed to trap about 40 commuters on the Virginia Railway Express Monday near Woodbridge, when they locked the metal gates from the pedestrian bridge at the Rippon station. The gates, which the VRE removed Tuesday, were originally put there to keep vandals out of the station. [AP via NBC4] >> Post columnist Courtland Milloy makes a compelling case for abolishing…

We’ve only ridden the Virginia Railway Express commuter rail once in an ill-fated experiment to see if it could help us bypass Memorial Day Traffic on Rt. 66. It didn’t. But for the thousands of Virginia commuters who count on it to get them to work every day, their ride is going to might get a bit more expensive. For the fifth consecutive year time in recent years, VRE is hiking might hike fares to…

Good morning, Washington. This shot of the Key Bridge was taken by Flickr user easement, who also posted some neat infrared shots of the area in his photostream. If you live in Virginia and several towns in Maryland, today is election day! To find out your polling place check out the website of the Virginia Board of Elections or contact your local government. Virginia Governors’ Race Neck and Neck: The gubernatorial race between Democrat Tim…