VRE’s 2006 Fare Increase

VARP’s comments, submitted to Virginia Railway Express March 24, 2006

With the congestion, pollution, and shortage of transportation choices in the Virginia Railway Express service area, not to mention reduced VRE service and poorer VRE service, a fare increase for the third year in a row is bad public policy.

We recognize that VRE’s financial troubles are the result of public policy that does not invest adequately in public transportation and that encourages auto use. It is long past time for that policy to change. The public interest requires attractive, economical transportation alternatives. To serve the public interest, VRE must become more attractive and more economical. The proposed fare increase works against this. VRE and its sponsors must balance and even increase the budget without discouraging ridership.

Rail and mass transit’s 21st-century role is to add time-sensitive freight and passenger capacity in corridors where highway expansion is prohibitively expensive and/or environmentally detrimental. Virginia, and the jurisdictions responsible for VRE, should be implementing multimodal policies that freeze or reduce the vehicle miles traveled in the congested, built-out corridors that the Virginia Railway Express serves.

Michael Testerman, President

Steve Dunham, Chairman

VRE’s 2005 Fare Increase

VARP’s comments, submitted to Virginia Railway Express March 2005

The Virginia Association of Railway Patrons believes that a fare increase on Virginia Railway Express for the third year in a row is not in the public interest.

Rather than making public transportation a more attractive alternative, a fare increase makes it less attractive.

VARP recognizes that the fare increase is proposed because of VRE’s current inadequate funding mechanism. VRE needs and deserves an ample dedicated funding source that enables it to expand, provide service according to markets rather than local jurisdictions, and offers the public transportation alternatives, not just traffic mitigation.

VARP also is disappointed that the changes in the 10-trip ticket discount are designed to alleviate hardware problems with VRE’s unreliable ticket vending and validating system and urges VRE to develop alternatives that preserve the flexibility and discount of the 10-trip ticket, preferably with a return to the 15% discount that existed a year ago.

Paper tickets that are manually validated by the crew or even the passenger are a possibility; they were used on passenger trains for many decades.

Finally, VARP urges VRE to proceed expeditiously with development of a reliable electronic validating system that would scan electronically encoded tickets and apply the appropriate discount according to frequency of use.

Respectfully,

Michael Testerman, President

Stephen Dunham, Chairman

Richard Peacock, Secretary

George Billmyer, Director

Virginia Association of Railway Patrons

VRE’s 2004 Fare Increase

VARP’s comments, submitted to Virginia Railway Express April 6, 2004

First of all, we believe that a fare increase at this time is harmful to the public interest. It follows an increase last year and will likely be followed by another next year. The participating jurisdictions have not increased their contributions in recent years, even though VRE passengers have been paying well more than their mandated 50% share. The 2% gas tax generates far more revenue for the typical county or city than the same jurisdiction gives VRE. In the case of Fairfax County this government gives all its gas tax revenue to Metro. Its contribution comes from its local tax collections. However, Fairfax County is one the richest counties in the country and can afford to help VRE more.

Inflation has gone up over 32% since VRE started in 1992. The local match has not been raised anywhere near this rate. It is appropriate that the sponsoring jurisdictions increase their contribution and that additional counties begin supporting VRE. Furthermore, this fragmented approach to funding a regional service has proven less than ideal. Passenger rail service in Virginia is in demand, but the practice of adding to it one locality at a time does not meet the needs of Virginia and indeed is inhibiting ridership growth, forestalling traffic relief, and reducing the availability of a mode of transportation that can mitigate the deterioration of air quality. It is time for state and regional funding of state and regional service, whether it is provided by VRE or some other entity.

In the event that the sponsoring jurisdictions refuse further support and VRE must increase fares to balance its budget, we wish to raise the following issues:

We are concerned that drastically reducing the discount on the ten-trip ticket will adversely affect a large number of passengers for whom the monthly and proposed 5-day tickets are uneconomical. We urge retention of the ten-trip ticket at its current 15% discount or, if absolutely necessary, not less than 12% discount.

If VRE’s ticket vending and validating system cannot reliably process the number of ten-trip tickets being used, then VRE should install separate, simpler validating machines to take the load off the vending machines or consider having the tickets hand-punched by the conductors.

We are also concerned that the pattern of the proposed restructuring disproportionately increases the actual price to riders traveling longer distances. A large number of short-distance riders have the bulk of their ticket cost covered by Metrochek, and the fare increase, if absolutely required, would have less impact on their out-of-pocket costs. Even riders who do not get Metrocheks would be impacted less because the 6% increase on a lower ticket price represents a smaller actual dollar amount. Conversely, riders from the more distant fare zones pay a higher percentage of their ticket cost (Metrochek being a flat subsidy) and would be more greatly affected by any fare increase. To preserve ridership, the fare increase should be equal in all fare zones or proportionately less for the riders traveling longer distances.

Another concern is that the proposed stepup fare for using VRE tickets on Amtrak trains, although justifiable for the greater comfort and usually faster trip time on Amtrak, poses serious problems for VRE and its riders:

• Some riders work weekends, and VRE proposes to eliminate what for many of them is their only public transportation choice, perhaps their only transportation choice. Even riders who use the Amtrak trains for recreation on weekends should not be discouraged from using public transportation for these trips. VRE has acknowledged that the number of riders on weekends is small. Therefore, VRE’s possible savings in eliminating this service are small. The limited weekend service should be preserved.
• A stepup fare of $1 to $3 a trip will persuade many riders to use VRE instead. Those VRE trains will fill up far from Washington and there will be no seats available for riders boarding farther up the line. Riders farther up the line may even be unable to board the trains.
• A separate ticket or fare will require train crews and administrative personnel to handle a large number of tickets and cash each day and possibly add a large number of transactions on VRE’s unreliable vending machines. This burden is going to eat up a lot of the revenue that might be gained from stepup fares.

If a stepup fare is absolutely necessary to help balance the budget, it must be low enough that it does not shift many riders to trains that do not have the capacity to handle them, and it should not add a lot of administrative work to handle small fares. One possibility would be to sell two classes of monthly and ten-trip tickets: those good only on VRE and those that, for a small charge—maybe 50 cents or less per ride—are valid on Amtrak trains. This would direct the revenue straight to VRE at the time the ticket is sold and would relieve Amtrak and VRE personnel of handling large numbers of small daily fares.

Finally, we urge VRE to explore other ways of increasing revenue:

• The youth fare could be restricted to persons under 18 unless they have student ID, requiring non-students age 18 and over to pay regular fares.
• Families could be permitted to bring two children using one ticket rather than require them to obtain the special youth tickets that are not available from any VRE ticket machine or on any VRE train.
• VRE should sell stepup tickets for riders who wish to travel beyond their normal zone on a monthly or ten-trip ticket.

We recognize that VRE’s financial troubles are the result of public policy that does not invest adequately in public transportation and that encourages auto use. It is long past time for that policy to change. The public interest requires attractive, economical transportation alternatives. To serve the public interest, VRE must become more attractive and more economical. The proposed fare increase and restructuring work against this. VRE and its sponsors must balance and even increase the budget without discouraging ridership.

Michael Testerman, President

Stephen Dunham, Chairman

Richard Peacock, Secretary

George Billmyer, Director