(The following story by Jennifer Buske appeared on the Washington Post website on March 28, 2010.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Rider feedback has led Virginia Railway Express officials to revise their proposal for service changes to accommodate new and longer trains.
Officials from the commuter rail service proposed last month to have a handful of trains originate and terminate at L’Enfant Plaza Station instead of Union Station. Because there is extra storage space at L’Enfant, the schedule change would have allowed rail officials to add cars to two Manassas Line trains and four Fredericksburg Line trains.
The other half of the proposal included an express train on the Fredericksburg Line that would leave at 5:05 a.m. and stop only at Leeland Road, Brooke, Alexandria, Crystal City, L’Enfant and Union Station. VRE officials said the express could trim 20 minutes from a rider’s commute into Washington.
After getting more than 3,000 comments on the proposed changes, VRE chief executive Dale Zehner said both proposals needed to be reworked.
A new proposal has all trains except the express ending at Union Station in the morning and adds two cars to trains 300 and 307 in December, once new locomotives arrive, Zehner said. Adding those cars will use up the remaining storage space at Union Station and help alleviate crowding on the Fredericksburg Line.
Zehner said he is working with CSX, the owner of the tracks, to try to get all evening trains to depart from Union Station. To do so, VRE would need to bring the express train from L’Enfant to Union Station during the afternoon. But CSX must make sure that doing so would not affect other train operations, VRE officials said. If Zehner cannot reach a deal, one evening train will have to leave from L’Enfant.
“I’m a little upset that in order to make an express train, my evening train could be disrupted,” Christine Myers, a Union Station rider, said during a public comment meeting Wednesday. “I’d either have to leave work early, which I can’t do, or leave 45 minutes late and wait for the next train.”
Zehner said VRE’s original proposal would have inconvenienced about 400 of the roughly 9,000 people who ride daily, which VRE did not want to do.
Zehner, who will bring the new proposals to the VRE Operations Board next month, said he will also recommend adding Woodbridge to the express train’s stops. The original proposal for the express had excluded any Prince William stops, which county officials and riders had protested.
VRE will host two more public hearings this week at which rail officials will present the old and new proposals. One hearing will begin at noon Tuesday at VRE’s offices at 1500 King St., Suite 202, in Alexandria, and the other will be at noon Wednesday at the Washington Court Hotel, 525 New Jersey Ave. NW in the District.