Regional transit providers OmniRide and Virginia Railway Express will modify services for the Christmas and New Year holidays.
In observance of the holidays, OmniRide buses will operate as follows:
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The spending plan attempts to increase lagging ridership and includes Saturday service to Washington, D.C., for the first time since the railroad began operations in 1992. Three round-trip trains will operate on the system's Fredericksburg and Manassas lines. Trains will travel northbound to the capital city in the morning and return south in the evening.
The board also approved VRE’s fare structure changes at its December 15, 2023, meeting at the OmniRide headquarters in Woodbridge. Base fares for FY 2025 will increase by five percent.Â
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Virginia Railway Express: "Tickets for the Santa Train will be available starting Monday, November 27 at 10:00 a.m. Tickets can be purchased for $5 (cash or check) or $6 (credit card)."
"For a list of in-person ticket sales locations, please visit the following link."
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During the VRE Operations Board meeting on Friday, November 17, 2023, in Woodbridge, the state’s only commuter railway, presented the results of an internal survey showing 94 percent of respondents favor Saturday service and a majority are willing to pay higher fares to get it.
VRE CFO Mark Schofield said that implementing Saturday service would lead to an additional $1 million in operating costs in FY2025. However, the railway’s overall operating costs are expected to decrease by $1.4 million due to other reductions.
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The Center Square: "Taxpayers are picking up more of the higher costs of transit in the U.S. since the pandemic, according to the latest data released by the Federal Transit Administration."
"Total operating expenses of all transit agencies have increased from $50.7 billion in 2019 to $53.7 billion in 2022, according to the FTA data. At the same time, passenger-paid fares plummeted during that time span, dropping from $15.3 billion in fare revenue in 2019 to $8.3 billion in 2022, a nearly 50% drop."
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Virginia Railway Express aims to add service on Saturday, starting July 1, 2024.
The state's only commuter railroad aims to run roundtrips on Saturdays on its Fredericksburg and Manassas lines. It's the first time in the railroad's 31-year history that it has suggested running weekend service.
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Virginia Railway Express passengers said there is room for improvement on the state's only commuter railroad.
There is also a sense of urgency from VRE officials to hike fares raise the cost of fares, and introduce Saturday service.
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Officials gathered to establish a new parking garage serving Virginia Railway Express riders and downtown Manassas Park visitors.
The new garage will be built on the north side of the railroad tracks, opposite the current Manassas Park VRE station parking lot. During a groundbreaking ceremony on Thursday, July 13, 2023, City Manager Laszlo Palko said the garage would be the "core" of the city's new downtown, which will feature a new movie theater, Jirani Coffeeshop, in addition to a new city hall and a public library which opened a year ago.
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With the region’s elected officials gathering at their annual retreat this Friday and Saturday, the Coalition for Smarter Growth continued to urge reform of the region’s transportation priorities.
A national poll of 2001 voters (90% of whom are drivers) released last week by Transportation for America revealed that two-thirds of Americans know highway expansions don’t cure traffic. Sixty-seven percent of American voters polled agreed that widening highways attract more people to drive, which creates more traffic in the long run, defeating the stated purpose for countless road expansion projects across the country.
In short, the public understands that “induced demand” is real, even if they are not aware of the term itself. Today, when officials in the DC region are planning for at least 900 more lane miles of highway and arterial road expansion and amid the ongoing debate over high-occupancy toll lanes for 495/270 in Maryland and 495 through Alexandria, the Coalition for Smarter Growth (CSG) urged officials to reconsider these plans. “CSG’s Induced Demand fact sheet for local, regional, and state officials – released today – makes clear the failures of road expansion,” said Stewart Schwartz, Executive Director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.
“Induced demand is the widely documented phenomenon in which widening major roads and highways results in more driving (vehicle miles traveled) that generally cancels out any congestion-reduction benefits in as little as five to ten years,” said Bill Pugh, Senior Policy Fellow for CSG and author of the fact sheet which draws upon numerous national and international studies and includes local DC area examples.
“Unfortunately, elected officials in the DC region continue to propose over 900 lane miles of major road expansion and continue to ignore the reality that it won’t work,” said Schwartz. “They will end up wasting billions of tax dollars and make our quality of life worse, not better.”
The Council of Governments’ Transportation Planning Board is currently developing its Visualize 2050 regional “constrained” long-range transportation plan1 (the existing 2045 plan includes 900 lane miles in road expansion), and in Northern Virginia right now, counties and cities are submitting project applications for funding through the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority.
CSG has previously shown in its “On the Wrong Road” report that the NVTAuthority’s “unconstrained” Transaction 2050 plan would add 1000 lane miles of roads in Northern Virginia alone and induce growth in driving at 1.5 to 3 times the rate of population growth in the outer suburbs. The NVTAuthority has allocated over half of its regional funding to road capacity expansion projects, even though the agency’s own Technology Strategic Plan acknowledges the reality of induced demand.
Stewart Schwartz
Executive Director, Coalition for Smarter Growth
Editors note: Potomac Local News aims to share opinions on issues of local importance from a diverse range of residents across all our communities. If you’ve recently spoken at a Board of County Supervisors meeting, send us a typed copy of your remarks for publication to [email protected].
