(The Washington Post published the following article by Lyndsey Layton on May 22.)
WASHINGTON — Virginia Railway Express officials held a public hearing this spring in Manassas on a plan to raise fares 4 percent, but no one came.
“We just sat there for an hour and a half, waiting,” said Mark Roeber, manager of public affairs for the commuter railroad.
Six more hearings across Northern Virginia failed to spark a much better turnout. A total of nine people testified, and a handful more sent e-mails. For the most part, the people who make 14,000 daily trips on VRE seem to accept that it could cost as much as 30 cents more per ride as of July 1.
“I don’t like it, but what are you going to do?” asked Betty Knight, a 47-year-old federal worker who boarded a train to Fredericksburg at Union Station last week. “I don’t want to take the bus, and I’m not going to drive, so the train’s the only thing.”
Although ridership growth is slowing or flat at transit systems across the country, VRE’s passenger load is growing 15 percent a year.
Passengers say clogged roads, unpredictable jams and the strain of bumper-to-bumper traffic have sent them to the rails. VRE, one of the fastest-growing commuter railroads in the country, operates 32 daily trains that run on two branches between Washington and Manassas and Fredericksburg.
“When you consider the gas and the wear and tear on the car, plus the anguish of driving, I’d rather take the train any day,” said Bill Hicks, 61, who lives in Warrenton and works in Washington as a technical writer. “It still takes me an hour and a half door to door, but I get to sit and relax. I read a couple of books a week. Much better than driving.”
Another possible reason for the muted reaction to increased fares is that many VRE riders receive a transit subsidy from their employers, said Sharon S. Bulova (D-Braddock), a Fairfax County supervisor and chairman of the VRE Operations Board.
According to VRE’s most recent ridership survey, 63 percent of riders are government workers, and most of them receive Metrochek, a subsidy of as much as $100 a month paid by the government to cover the cost of a worker’s commute on transit.
For Knight, who commutes from Fredericksburg, Metrochek helps to cover the cost of her $240 monthly VRE pass. She said she would be much more concerned about a fare increase if she were paying the full cost of her commute.
Even though VRE is gaining riders, railroad managers say costs are outpacing revenue and will create an operating deficit of about $600,000 for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
The railroad faces higher fees charged by CSX and Norfolk Southern, the two freight railroads that own the tracks used by VRE, and by Amtrak, which operates the service for VRE. But it also has been hit by an unexpected cost this year — security expenses.
When the federal government declared a Code Orange terrorist threat, VRE, which doesn’t have its own police force, had to hire private security to patrol its rail storage areas and monitor stations.
“That took us back significantly,” said VRE General Manager Pete Sklannik Jr., who said he expected the railroad to have similar security costs next year.
The railroad also is facing a serious crunch in its capital budget and is asking the local jurisdictions that help to pay for VRE to increase their subsidies by about $600,000 the next fiscal year. Those funds would be used as a local match so VRE could get federal dollars to build additional parking and extend platforms to accommodate longer trains.
VRE also is seeking $100 million from the federal government to purchase 47 high-capacity rail cars. VRE officials originally hoped to get that money from local residents through a tax referendum, which was rejected by voters in Northern Virginia in November.
Sklannik said that because the local tax was defeated and the state was “broke,” the railroad’s last hope for capital dollars was the federal government.
“We’re in a crisis mode,” he said. “I don’t want to sound like an alarmist, but we need investment. The commonwealth is broke, and we have to look to the federal government.”
Sklannik said that if ridership growth continues at its current rate, VRE will run out of seats sometime next year.
“Everybody wants a seat, and, you know, everyone should get one,” he said.