(The following article by Kelly Hannon was posted on the Free-Lance Star website on February 20.)
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — Early rising commuters could gain a quicker option to get to work in the D.C. area.
An express commuter train leaving at 5 a.m. would collect passengers in Fredericksburg and at Stafford County’s Brooke and Leeland Station stops, then make a beeline for work destinations.
It’s one schedule addition Virginia Railway Express CEO Dale Zehner wants to ask CSX Corp. to allow.
The express service could satisfy passenger demands for a train that transports them to work earlier than the current 5:15 a.m. train, which makes all stops. It would have to run in the 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. window CSX has set aside to let VRE operate on its tracks, Zehner said.
There’s just one snag to resolve.
“Our problem is what are we going to do in the afternoon,” Zehner said. It’s not clear how evening schedules would be adjusted.
Zehner shared his thoughts on the train schedule and a range of topics during a two-hour freewheeling session with a small group of commuters last week in Fredericksburg.
A proposal to eliminate Free Ride Certificates yielded the most rider comments.
The certificates are a VRE tradition, started when the railway was trying to build ridership in the early 1990s. If a train is 30 minutes late, passengers get a voucher for a free ride. VRE is the only railroad in the nation that uses them, Zehner said. Eliminating the certificates would save VRE around $60,000 a year.
A few commuters viewed the certificate as an incentive for VRE to run on time, and a way to demonstrate they care about passengers.
Zehner assured riders that VRE always wants to run on time, and that he is also concerned dropping the certificates will mean chipping away at VRE’s uniqueness.
Zehner said VRE wants to keep up its quirky, personal touches–candy giveaways on the trains on Halloween and Valentine’s Day, occasional coffee and doughnuts on the platforms, a chance to talk to Zehner and other managers. At one point, VRE had a contest where commuters looked for stickers under their seats to win a prize.
“We don’t want to be run of the mill,” Zehner said.
Unfortunately, with the certificates, “there’s a lot of fraud,” Zehner said.
Conductors know how many people are riding a late train. But VRE gets additional requests for free ride certificates to be mailed, and sends them out to everyone who asks.
They typically send out more certificates than the number of people on the train, Zehner said.
Zehner said he would consider extending the program trigger to 45 minutes as a compromise.